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Why does
spring grab me by the throat? what does it want of me?
so what even if it does not
have enough spears and military flags?
I jeer at you, spring, for
flaunting your one-eyedness and your
bad breath. Your
stupration your infamous kisses. Your peacock
tail makes tables turn with
patches of jungle (fanfares of saps
in motion) but my liver is more
acidic and my venifice stronger than
your malefice. The lynch
it’s 6 PM in the mud of the Bayou
its a black handkerchief
fluttering at the top of a pirate ship’s
mast it’s the strangulation
point of a fingernail up to the carmine
of an interjection it’s the
pampa it’s the queen’s ballet
it’s the sagacity of science
it’s the unforgettable copulation.
O lynch salt mercury and
antimony! The lynch is the blue smile
of a dragon enemy of angels the
lynch is an orchid too lovely
to bear fruit the lynch is a
preamble the lynch is the hand of
the wind bloodying a forest
whose trees are galls brandishing
in their hand the smoking torch
of their castrated phallus, the
lynch is a hand sprinkled with
the dust of precious stones, the
lynch is a release of
hummingbirds, the lynch is a screw up, the
lynch is a trumpet blast a
broken gramophone record a cyclone’s
tail its train lifted by the
pink beaks of predatory birds. The
lynch is a gorgeous head of
hair that fears flings back into my
face the lynch is a temple
crumbled to its roots and girthed
with virgin forest. O
lynch loveable companion beautiful squirted
eye huge mouth mute save where
the jerking spreads over it a
delirium of finely woven snot,
lightning bolt, on your loom a
continent bursting into islands
an oracle slithering in contortion
like a scolopendra a moon
settling in the breach the sulphur
peacock ascending in the
summary loophole of my assassinated
hearing.
—Translated from the French by Clayton Eshleman |