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Three Poems
by Claire Hero


PENNED INSIDE the wondervault
I did not know my place
until I had been blooded
by the great Chain

Now: Cut the mouthpiece
from the
decomposing links,

watch new morphemes
hatch
in the wounds

& eat them
clean




    THIS FLESH, LOAMY breeding ground,
    begets Multitudes, bodies
    sprouting from eyesand & bonemeal:

    the needish & the nichebreachers,
    geneshepherds, genescavengers;
    the was & the stillborn

    squat in the fossa,
    gorging on spermsalt & eggclay,
    gorging & rooting

    exuberantly,
    mutinously, their blighted heads
    lumpish with seed—



 . . .
    Zooidal upstarts
    low & unruly
    They recognize no boundary

    —I uproot the geneweed,
    another sprouts, spreads,
    I uproot the geneweed—




SEA-SWALLOWED, severed
from the ankle, the feet
swim free,
tide-drawn
deeper, farther –

flattening
scuffling under
the sand, skin
finning,
        & slow-
ly, slowly,
the floundereye
traveling up
from the sole


            (How far will I go without feet?
                        (( – we, we –


Watch, little fish,
the sun eclipsed
by my moonskull –