It takes pulse under the swollen pearl.

Low-hanging, crouched in the green dark.

Breath fusing from fermented

heat, thickened by mangos

tumbled through witchweed.

Gentle with months

of flood, the

charcoal

earth

sculpts its mirrored eyes. When you scream like

wind whipped through crag, it clots into

skin–the buzzsaw of locusts.

Crescented bark of palm

as arms. The silver

scent of Mother

after your

sister

was

born and absence of noise clayed on ear-

drums. You are barefoot and angry

at Father, ankles rippling through

Allah’s dull exhale. In

the dim halo of

trees you ask it

what it wants.

Later,

you

will tell anyone who might listen,

anyone who might believe you,

that it showed you palms rivered

with promises. Banyan

that could bleed honey.

Jambu seeds that

would turn the

land to

groves

of stars. Mount Bromo’s charred phlegm that, when

stirred into coffee, could anchor

the sun from sleep and keep the

years from running. But first,

it wants you to bare

your mouth for it.

It wants you

to let

it

place a bow of wet leaves on your tongue.

Then a child will spring. Your spittle

its ari-ari, coarse hair

exploding from your mouth–

obsidian

geyser. You

are a

child

yourself, so at this proposal, you

laugh. It rises to rage from your

refusal. A face fractured:

egg dropped against mortar.

Between the cracks, a

viscous fluid

gleams and beads

into

your

father’s face. Again, you scream, and like

a stone thrown into still swamp, his

face billows into faces

of men you will come to

know and faces of

men not yet born.

Distant and

instant,

as

though it is both in you and beyond

trace, its form begins losing core

in a howl, edges silking.

It circles your child frame,

pulling your skin to

its toothed pant. Spirals

of hollow, high

above you.

Leaking

not

a voice or a sound but sulfur. Spelled:

My hunger will root inside your

blood. I sowed a blade too deep

to weed, but your daughters

will water it. Watch

it grow and watch

their daughters

watch it

grow.

The pit caves, cleaving night the way that

Mother halves a snake fruit shy of rot.