The Body as an Anchor

Wake up tangled
in the body and slow

to rise, the mathematics
of struggle and sunlight,

this bound flesh
in awkward edges. Grey

lobes waterlogged in disquiet,
roll the pain into place;

tamp down the boiling
impulse to flee, to vitiate

this failed flesh. To feed myself
to the river sirens, their muted

mutilated songs and moon faces—
to be reborn whole,

the gravitational center of some
bright green world, the center

of our swirled language—
my native skin. Plunge

new furrows with my tongue,
give purchase to uninfected elms

dressed in lichen,
germinate ivy between my teeth,

give my skin over
to barnacles and will myself

to the silt-soft riverbed.
To bind the world to my body

as I sink, pockets deep
with stones.