In the Garden of the Bridehouse

In Dominion, the Breath’s Hammer

36 In Dominion, the Breath’s Hammer (The Botanical’s Confession of Distinction) Bowed beneath bloated limbs, the Name grew like anemone: a colt cantered before her snorting steam; taking a handful of sand, she fed the animal its passage from dust. She said, my pet, my grace—tear us pale, perish my lungs so wingless.  On grasses beneath, the man & woman were each other. The woman took the man’s head in her hands, parting his scalp into a gulf; a carob tree grew from the opening; his brown hair coiled coral vine through the branches. He caressed her neck, eased his hand in until her trachea was sheathed in palm. 37  Coiled in boughs—He said, When grace is exhaled, life is time without negation, our bodies bridged across dust-weighted air. Said, Consign the tongue to the hesitance between hammer & peal, the body will awake deathless, clothed in acacia. Against the tree, She said, Inscribed between leaves light-sharpened, trumpetshaped , a raw human forest resigns between tongue & tooth. The man took her hair, wound it into braid.  From stem & branch I saw the animals approach. White moth, magenta-flecked wing incandescent, sea urchin, broad-tailed hummingbird, wasp wing herded by wren song & lion breath down rows of juniper smoke: with wooden hook & blade man & woman peeled the animal’s skin from scalp, the bay, the caw of lamb & crow cut from tongue, bound to myrtle— the pelt, the hind become alphabet. Deprived of signature, the animals stood in the ark’s descent, all that was without language. 38  The serpent curled from umbilical stem, she cradled me in palm, where incandescence ascribes definition, sweet blossoms drifting deathless into authorities. The man took her palm, with a blade cut her finger base to nail, said, This to approximate a world. He then bit to my white: his body opened as an eye. I lay on the grass where dropped: a worm curled in me, eating, whispering to seed as they blossomed to flesh. ...