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FRAGMENT BENEATH THE SKIN

Fingers grope. The sacks already laid out. Monitors
encoded. Shutdown mode. We insert everything.
To conveyor-belt rinsed mouths. Hooks instead of sterile
hands. What syndrome does open skin have? How obtuse are myelinated
areas? Women press their thighs together. There are warehouses of black
children. Smoky floors. Coal wrenched out of the after-oil asphalt. Which
womb is my son shut in? I leave DNA on the torn apart bodies.
Helicopters are hauling. The skeleton leaks ever more thoroughly. Ever
more critically the grafted slime circulates. Or? The flaming places
happen in us. Go for water. Sip from the source. In the throat. Stream
mixes with the sea.

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COLLECTIVE INDICATOR

When it burns? We go to the port to watch the tankers.
Their mermaids row in the moored brightnesses. From
the bottom. They touch the cliffs. The bank stiffens. Rivers
flow to hot countries. Children dig up black stone.
In darkened walls we’re undressed. We sleep
as if in the pits of the womb. With cavities in the bones. Cracked
in the body. We gather up earth into dusty lungs. Are there still
airways? Ripped open to the wind. How does a bird finish? Before
the slammed gateway. What fragile law does the pine tree know, or the fir?
On the ashy photo a whitened boy looks out. Fingernails
grow faster than the pulled-out trees. When it burns. We breathe
cautiously. Among unripe apple trees, children’s heads.

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