mother animal.

i know mother animal.

she been walking under pines since Creation.

maybe you seen her painted in ochre? maybe

you seen her in Rome.

∞

mother animal got white teeth

and red seeds in her entrails.

they weep from her womb when she walks,

old swaddle-belly.

∞

mother animal has blue jaw drip hunger.

mother animal got crazy old-woman eyes.

mother animal is twelve thousand years old and pisses holy water—

it smells of sweetgrass.

∞

mother animal has the teeth of time ‘round her throat.

she bays her children back from old shores with new names:

she-wolves grown thin on Crown Land,

grown deaf to her tongue.

∞

mother animal tastes the void in her sacrum:

bones noosing naked organs like knotweed.

mother animal been walking for two hundred years. she will lie down soon.

she needs to lie in the shadow of her creator and sleep.

_____________________________________

∞

Note from the author:

My personal favorite "tattooable" lines are as follows:

- mother animal got white teeth and red seeds in her entrails.

- [she] pisses holy water— it smells of sweetgrass.

- old shores with new names

- she-wolves grown thin on Crown Land, grown deaf to her tongue.

- she needs to lie in the shadow of her creator (and sleep.)