A Bell, Still Unrung

[marieellen]

She daily effuses
the close-mouthed
tantrum of her fevers.

Hog-tied and lunatic.
Born toothsome,
unholy. Born uppity.

Blue-jawed and out-order.
Watched her sculptor
split her bitter seam

with his scalding knife;
mauled through the errant
flesh of her nature

and hemorrhaged mercury,
molted snakeroot, a smoke
of weeping silver.

She, accused.
Sprung from the head
of a thousand-fisted

wretch or a blood-dark
cosmos undoubling
her bound body.

Vexed shrew. Blight of moon.
She, armory. Pitched-milk pours
from her gold oracular.

Bred in her nest a lone
grenade, prized, unpried
its force-ripe wound.

She, disease. Often bruised
to brush the joy of anything.
Zombic. Un-groomed.

Her night slinks open
its sliding pin. One by one
these loose hopes

harpoon themselves
in, small-ghosts alighting
at her unwhoring.

She, infirmary.
God’s swallowed
lantern, tar-hair and thick.

Her black torchstruck.
A kindling stick.
No sinkle-bible fix

to cure this burning.
Shrill hell. Jezebel.

Isn’t it lonely.

By Safiya Sinclair