BY JOYELLE McSweeney
1.
Gubernatrix cristata—the glint from the crest of the cap
indicating the arrival of the god on the field of battle—
his sublimation into mortal flesh—his sublimation—
sublime crease in the battle scene goes on leaking light
like a seam in tight clothing how it locks attention—like a migraine’s
sentinel—this sublimity— as the carnage crests and unfolds around it
striated like a sea, incarnadine, tensor, flexor, the short nerve fibers
twitch towards action, the long nerve fibers towards
endurance, sustaining the sweep of the battle, with one hit
the battle will have reached its peak, and the pieces
all lay thereafter like an arrow, like particles in plasma
each pointing towards its outcome, like sugar crusts a needle
Gubernatrix cristata—flits on the breeze
it lifts its brise soleil, like a breeze over a battlefield
lifts the shreds and scraps, though the shrapnel
stays lodged in its mortal flesh, sludgy layer,
is it mortal any more once it’s dead. The pestle comes down
and the herb is muddled, but the spark goes up
and sears a flaw in the retina, in the tracking shot
Hunter gatherers: it’s come to my attention
a lethality is folded into this scene
as all scenes--it’s folded into the eyespots and the oxygen rafts
it’s folded into the plasmas and the polymers
by which we see, it’s folded into the way the universe
blew apart to make a way for us, pounded galaxies to powder
for our ribs, for the seams on the skull dry as a Bible map,
as any sacred river, that marked a border so bore a battle,
the blood, the fracture, the crinoline, the annotator
labeling each specimen bone in Latin, in brown ink
2.
Floreat schola cryptiensis. May Crypt School bloom.
I am the hoopoe at your gate, the memory keeper,
but I’ve sustained a blow, and can retain no memory
and my blood’s turned unwholesome as green ink.
I exhibit no desirable traits.
I’m combustible, and now, by proximity to you,
I am inflamed
and drop like a peacock falling into paradise
which is to say—like a drop of ink
every gold eye ignited, in blue-green skirts of flame
I form an unorthodox orifice on the sky
I burn like one great eye
the iridescent iris conflagrating
and the black hole carbonizing and spreading
in a still blacker hole
the pupil widening as if surprised
to fit every pupil of Crypt School inside
3.
Divine Assignment:
scatter on the scatterplot
spray of pollen or birdshot
fingerlaking the collar bone
crazed in its crackled glaze
like a grackel’s wing
raise your flight wing
collapse on the flight out of Egypt
in the downer landscape, in utero, inside itself like brain
green-black and folded, mirror
less and gazeless medusa
in its own intestine gaze—byzantine, intestine,
the mystery of the gaze locked on itself,
paused there, the u in Medusa can endlessly unwind
like innards, intestine,
the sea turtle turning over in a shower of rain
the clotted gland raining into itself
the splinter of lead greening the tissue
glaucoma—granuloma—the granule sugaring
its properties toxic and lyric
to enter and to permeate
to dissolve and to encrypt
Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books of poetry, stories, novels, essays, translations and plays, including the forthcoming poetry volume Toxicon and Arachne (Nightboat Books) and The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults. With Johannes Göransson, she is the co-author of the international press Action Books. She teaches at Notre Dame.