NewPoetry

Rachelle-Anne Lawka

Medusa said, you are tragedy—a single swanlike neck bent to the shape
of your bodies shared degenerative slithering, your mother’s varicose veins,
spider-web thin on the fisheye of your body’s blunt Humber River, but
Medusa said, you are clear flesh—translucent and wet

a caul of semi-permanent syntax tattooed across the skin
of your grandmothers’ shared Bloor West Village, but I said, I am a number
3.1415926535—no, not that number, I am serpentine—yes, I am snakes
and ladders my death-win, a version of you: Cobra-headed,

puckered and proud, me the face of a simulated-snake-dog, only
I am teeth: box-cutter fangs, a food processor pulverising where my gums
should be, but Medusa said, you are Pegasus. Sylphlike-spine, thirty-six
feathers light of your father’s eyes. The truth is this: I am his straw

-boned, wood-tongued, sculpted stone-house stuck in a forest
of beheaded bodies. I am throw away: my disjointed killing, not
dying, I am marvel at: how many layers of shed skin can I wear
before our shared grief finally grows bones. I am

how many gallons of bloodied concrete and black tar can someone
swallow and purge and rub in the raw of their man-made-wound
before they blind themselves to another year’s regurgitated hurt
—the answer is: in 555 days I am dusk-dawn with a hint of chain-smoked

Gods, I am Poseidon-ravine-green—never mind that, I am actually
Flowerpot-Island-green, man’s mulched ocean. I am a tethered rope
caught against the hull of your gaze, I am your gaze entombed
in a bottle on the beach of your ancestors’ choked down, rattlesnake-

mistakes. I am a cork-cap to the gap of your missing wisdom
tooth. A blood-clot to my own dry-socket. I am the gnawed, gangrene-leg
of every 68 seconds—I am a bowel. No, I am howl, I am the swollen belly
of night deshelled, yolk, the dream of wolves sauntering

beneath my pulled-out scales. I am teeth: my mother’s, my grandmother’s,
my own. I am Father’s soggy silicone dentures yanked from the jowls
of ancient wolves. I am your neck: soft-bellied, pale. I am a dog—no, I am
your Cobra-headed-dog stuck between Medusa’s Bloor-West ankles.