from HERA CALF SET CLAY FOG
you are afraid of the tunnel the Golden Nugget is a ferry to Puget Sound, Henry is a steamboat captain who drives the Cape May Ferry to Delaware unless it switches a different course & then in Maine the solar body unexpected in the waves, he’s Jesus & King John cooked him a mud pie
i could only go to the highway & buy some roses & leave them on the doorsteps of that woman who checked her digital time engaged with the Forensics Eddie gleaned from the Sony Walkman he rewound & he was Cold, Not a Survivor, from the malaise of this island where he gave to me a loaf of bread & said only this person can chalk the roadway
my alien father held open the door as i bought the lottery ticket & September came & the hogs would listen but it was better to be in a mood suggestive of farm – birthed snails under the earth, the glossary under the earth, one word that simply means to live in marble
my mother repeated the earth worm song well into the evening & i went to the garden the next morning to find rampion. my father was stepping on earth worms & had a gun & said “fauna” i was flying out of the country, flying out of the body of the woman with a big, big heart squishing her blood out of her orifices until the slender body was a dandelion or an amphibian, not a child, but a tapeworm
there’s no hospital on this island so when someone dies of heart disease they bring the helicopter & the Skipper of the ship has deserted the Main Land but the carrier pigeons exalted the statue of The Lady of Ascension & the story was even older, so with reels of film or simple recording devices, the highway that lead to the Parkway vanished, & the Wetlands appeared & with it a new Motel 6, & Julie was sitting in the lobby licking her ice cream cone & i was buying a phosphate & the Skipper was ordering a mean old Sundae & the neighbors came, so we put away the camera
we were in the paddle boat when i asked for mercy, & i didn’t know who i was asking but i knew someone at the hospital would hear me if asked even louder, so with a scream i knocked down the dresser, broke the mirror above the hope chest, screamed until the nurse rushed over, tapped me on the shoulder, asked if i needed the doctor, & i trembled & she was an original, not a scene-hand, not someone created to advance the plot, so i grew nervous & pressed play on the story board
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Debrah Morkun believes in near death experiences & prays to the old gods. She lives in Philadelphia, where she curates The Jubilant Thicket Literary Series & is a founding member of The New Philadelphia Poets. Her first full-length book of poetry, Projection Machine, was published by BlazeVox Books in April 2010. Visit Debrah at http://www.debrahmorkun.com/