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