Original poem read by Peri Dwyer Worrell
Tag: Poetry
No! Is not an option. The options are yes, or yes. That’s why the sun is so bright and my eyes are so dim. Oh, I know they say it’s because I have a lizard brain. “Lizard brain” is even a word they use as a synonym for primitive and irrational.
But we females know better because the twining and untwining of DNA within us is a spiral ladder for electrons moving in spin sequences down phosphate spines.
Come with me to the manxinil tree and learn what generations before me learned: I will fan you with the leaves and your eyes will burn and swell shut and render you blind while I nibble the tiny apples in the sun. Once you are weeping from the injury I will let you taste the apple and you will die.
Something is spinning within me and also within you, phosphatidal tidal phosphates that can bring the sea inside the sandy sun and remain entangled while leaping like dolphins, baby iguanas, scaled striped squirrels scampering from rock to rock.
Invaded, a pouch, a crease, a sulcus
Tiny entities that do not matter do
Matter now that they have bred
Though you never took them in…
Nothing to do now but love them
A boy in a tenement’s pets
Six legs, racing roaches in jars
Pigeons, rats, mitochondria.
Here, parrots flock and strip
Fruit from the trees and sing
In cages on the porch. Know
What’s yours is never and always theirs.
The night; the cool,
The squares of light
Across the lake.
My home, your home,
Our home, no home.
Earth, air, fire, lake.
Camp ground rules are:
Peace in the night.
