c h i m a e r a (invasive species) by Alex Patrick Dyck
i am the church
where you drink wine
where you press your knees
where you drive the nail
pierced trunk
a cross affixed
to a lucky tree–
the spotted ass of
the green underripe
pear
i am selfish
in my collection
of mottled fruit
deer food crow food
filling my woven sack
they called you
common
and abundant
lucky
as an impetuous breeze swoops
on your laden boughs
on my knees
i page through grasses
for hard sweet droplets
cracked pomes
something rotted from
the inside out–
the swelling
blossoms
fall sweetly
upon dirt
a potent tension
between
remembering and
forgetting–
bittersweet
wanderer–
who welcomes you?
twining your
impenetrable thicket
seedfull
acrid berries
carried by the birds
i bear libations
from the dead
drinks poured into
the earth and a
crushed chalice–
i know the gods
i know their wet pistils
i know the tension
of divine
creepers
coiling towards stars
tree of heaven
filled with swallows
who sing news
of plague–
rest alongside my imprint in the grass
rest you are the thunderstorm
rest serpent
rest my heart–
a dream of a misty field
bejeweled with rotten apples
the sky replete with rain
broken
wide
everything falling
into something else
o the ecstasy of being
a rusty bucket
so open and
ready to be filled–
tooth against tooth
of dusk
my white nightdress
glows like almost eclipse
do not bask in the baleful rays
scorpio blood moon
i open my book
finger the seam to
love has the rigor of death
pearly stockings hang limp
like wilted datura
is this a spell or
a vexation?–
i cannot deny
the purity of
terror
i grasp
i tie leaf to leaf
vines grasp
entangled
should there be a more pointed
name for grief
wild
carrot
a drop of blood on
your lacey umble
i know you from the meadow
and lonesome bouquets
they too call me wild–
i know only how to vine
tho i choke the weeping cherry
they called me unwelcome
i am simply mortal–
the sound of glass on marble
rings as the crickets
wing song a bowl
of wine and berries
for the sepulcher–
have you ever licked a stone?
o i plead for forgiveness–
something haunts
this body
i lurk where
the clay lays
broken
disturbed
this body
is haunted
by lands
traversed
oceans
crossed
this tongue
makes a shape
with no words
to wrap itself
around
a verge
a perimeter
a periphery
a boundary
a brink
at the very brim
the edgewalkers–
i have opened my body
to the latency
of desire
the unfurling
promise
of night
a sour covenant
the dissonance
of truths
escaping cultivation
pruned
sapped
tapped
split like
willow
branches
a temple
woven
of mud–
milky oats are milking
i am bruised as sumac
pressed under a boot heel
to beg is to pray
when you’re a thirsty bitch
i am the church
where you drink wine
where you press your knees
where you drive the nail–
Alex Patrick Dyck is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, frog man, storyteller, performer & medicine maker; a romantic hoarder of sentimental trash and trampled roses, an altar builder, memory gatherer, a seeker seeking. They see art-making as resistance and as play: in all manners, an act of devotion. Their third book of multimedia poems, Butterflies Come Out At Night was published in July by 1080 Press. They live, work and grow in the Hudson Valley on occupied Munsee-Lenape and Mohican land.