Friday, December 15, 2023

Catherine Wagner


Nervous Device - Wagner, Catherine


from Impersonal Lubricant

Live jellies have no brains,
float blindly

but they can fall asleep, can shed 
nerve toxins to defend the colony

and triggered by light
at dawn or dusk

their see-thru pump-domes
simulcast eggs and sperm

into tolerant solution.
Sexual jellies. Some jellyfish

invisible by day
do phosphoresce in darkness.

They could [be] hurt [you]
if you mined them

for the phosphorus
that burns the skin in war.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Natasha Trethewey

  Elegy For the Native Guard                                         Now that the salt of their blood       Stiffens the saltier oblivion of...