PIG BTTM LOOKING UP

To be penetrated is to abdicate power – leo bersani

at the bottom of the well
a boy is singing

the boy sings well
from the bottom

from the deep
bottom of his weather

from the weathered
bottom of his depths

the well is a song
the boy inherits by falling

the boy who fell
felled himself

leapt down the well’s
dark throat

the well is the world
turned inward

the boy leapt when
he heard himself

echoed back—
his whole life

beside empty windows
beside telescopes

the boy never could
imagine becoming

the heard thing
‘til he heard it

the whole town
worried for him

when he fell down
the well but not

when he became it—
then he became

an endless dark jacket,
a long dead alphabet

he swallows &
swallows

the whole world
is a well & all the men

are merely buckets
dropped into him

the boy grows large
through this swallowing

scares the dogs
poisons the ground water

belts through the town’s
wet taps

at dawn he looks up
to sees the circle

of a perfect red coin
a perfect red welt

on a god’s heaving
chest.

BABE THE PIG DOES THE SHEEP-NOISE WHEN MOURNING THE SHEEP

grief is an animal. we all know that. but which animal
exactly? what kingdom, what family, is it ever a fish?

does its voice change as it leaves the body or is there
a bestiary somewhere in the chest?

great bone ark that crates and creates each heaving
lamentation. remakes the grieved thing as noise.

at the televised funeral the ingenue performs the gone
singer’s living song & for a moment is overtaken

slow howl opening the cage of her mouth. when X
died i made sounds i haven’t made since.

it came into me as a wind. it rode me as wind

Image © theilr