Christina Mengert is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Brown University. Her poems have appeared in Castagraf and BlazeVOX.

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

Is an axle's excavation
an axiom's inversion
that muzzles
the ventrioloquist breath

of a nipple. The revolving door
of its throat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Alice

 

sampling the Orchid wonders how it might be like a testicle. She weighs it, soaks it

in butter, shaves it. It resists washing and unfolds like a tangerine.

 

[genus orkhis] Where the bulb rounds, a gentle scrubbing. Adequate love remarks.

 

She would have it pinned like an avocado to the cheek of Latin America. Where there are orchards

and if that means (color indicating evolution and frame) n. (pl) fields of scrota.

 

She wraps it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What happens when you blink, Dr. Muffet.

 

When you wake, you find yourself a spider. You cough. The canvas shudders down, like a river.

You find a hexigon rumpled. You find a center and chew. The three hours you hold yourself

are thin. No one sees your legprints, or a heave.

            little miss muffet

Prior to volcano, there was thunder, and giant blue overwhelm. Reaching for manna, a woman

vanishing in bed. History, you think, is a portable frown. Then, how a voice climbs the bank

to discover geometry.

            sat on a tuffet

In one, the sky drops over the rings. In the other, the sky is the ring, dew driving bone

into otherwise pearl. In the distance, impossible angles, a fade that turns unblinking.

            as I am now, so shall

No one asks what your point is. History sits in your body, and the net you thought you wove.

The moment comes in the form of a cocoon; its center, in the form of a folding prayer.

            eating her curds and

If you were a bird, painters would live in your shoulders.