Anew

Look upon me.
Minerva’s done this.
In the blue depths
human hair floats willfully
and now, above,
mine slithers, fixed;
I am in love with it.

As far as Poseidon,
I remember clearly
sliding throughout the bulge of the sea,
some of it getting in me —
that it made me jolt and buck
with its implacable shifting, its twisting.

Released like some bone-bereft jellyfish,
I am now one of those, all
head and hair, and hope
never to return to the beforehand;
I am a mother of myth.

Cursed by my kind,
I am more than what were once my kind;
winged horses burst from me
Medusa,
Medusae.
 

Naturalist

A material thing on the verge of being split
can emit light, the energy surging through it
causing triboluminescence.
The force of keeping
together against pulling away — earthquakes
do it, burst into short show.
Light
renouncing: though the words we have for it
sound slow, are a mouthful, like the day too full

of light in the far north in the summer: 3
a.m. and the sun on water dancing,
never quite faded.
But that’s a tipping
and a siphoning, a sky refilling — not an avalanche
you might miss —

when you came to me, smiling,
there was already a tearing: I bit your skin,
I pulled away,
but understand that I was forming
bonds for both: it was fire working
for adhesion, a little necessary repulsion.