we do not touch our living half so well as elephants touch their dead

by Samara Golabuk

What staticky mud is skin. Be thou not a
germophobe, worlds are we. Biomes.

The grandmothers know, we are
moths pinned by their knowing —

eyes, lancets to the soul. Matr-
ix of flesh most modern still

goes dark with the clay, ochre
smear, the blood a marker.

A dowsing rod nicks water’s veins,
pricks tongues turned to their magic,

shapes runes in the dusky dark
of our mouths as clavichord keys bite

the winds in half, knot its spillways,
turn them toward the caverns of our hearts,

(that corded beast, Hephaestus forge),
thumb-dump, thumb-dump, some

dumb thing stunts the pumps but
there’s no water here in heaven,

we are born in the milky gray
middleway between morning and stillness,

little puddles, withered udders,
we drink and are animals together.