so much of me is hooked to a rumor—
if Hera’d not struck me, two-tongued
and memory in my fingertips, nearly fifty
and quick as fuck
quick as sea water
quick to catch my body’s own murmurs
quick to cast a shadow
or some other Zeus,
my tongue, stress-
fractured and
mythy
astream
abed
with you,
a stranger
my mouth is always
working at the world;
cock and cunt and
you, Wm Blake
the great frog on
which the world
rides
gigged ‘n battered
cooked ‘n et
cooked ‘n et
* * *
ditch murmur &
frog sounds—
Jeanne Gang’s
thumbprint along
the cratered as-
phalt where kids
buy nickel bags
and set picnic tables
afire; a ten-minute
train passes through
Hammond—the wet-
lands’ slow order
map fold—
blue line into the crease
the boiling pot
the ditch out back and
the I disappears in sleep
like water into itself
Toad, Isolino Ferreira
