O Spirit – Vandal Poem of the Day

It takes work for a woman to welcome a fist

With her body. Fists are larger than the spaces

They make for themselves in a chest, or the holes

Into which we welcome them with longing.

Asking whether I wish for one now because I knew

Them well as a child is like asking if a volcano

Expels lava because, when a small mountain

Cloistered within seawaters, its first experience

Of heat was unbidden. The question

Requires a certain old knowledge of safety to ask.

What does it mean that the first time you saw a cock

It was raised in menace from a boil of shared blood,

The question says. Tell me the origin story of pain,

And tell me what happens to pain as it ages,

And tell me how the ocean-bottom dirt you grew

From tastes. Volcanoes understand differences

In kinds and in chords. The origin story of pain

Is abjection, foisted. Not a single stream of lava

Is like one that has come before or will come since.

All my lips make treacherous lights float in midair.