of alchemy

O little thing o tender tiny Parasite Hanging from her slack breast The milk dribbling All the time he could not eat

Boneless body hanging in reddarkest silence In untime suspended like Silkworm singing out the strands

In the distance Hear that thrash The kick of waves accruing silt

Your heart is a bear with the den curled up inside A red whorled abalone flesh All nestled up in  opalesence

Signing out the strands of you Slow accretion around that central irritant Softening the trauma

You sit enshrined in muscle Slowly growing sentience Spindle raveling in silent Fragmentaries

*

John Moore Williams has written three chapbooks: I discover i is an android (Trainwreck Press, 2008), writ10 (VUGG Books, 2008) and, with Matina L. Stamatakis, Xenomorphoia (Wheelhouse, 2009). He’s also published a full-length book of poetry, [+!] (Calliope Nerve, 2009), with Matina Stamatakis and Kane X. Faucher. Poems have appeared in Shampoo, Dear Sir, Otoliths, BlazeVox, and many others.

Photograph from performance by Leif Holmstrand.