TWO POEMS by GRAHAM IRVIN

genesis

imagine my mouth
 a new birth cord

  I was
thrown into the trees      impaled by
    a ram’s horn

           some of my mother’s
stomach is still in my dream

     I saw a man
stab toward our dog    I hid naked inside
the empty doghouse
                           my father’s
death was no accident

        imagine I saw a child’s foot split in two by sharp rust
beneath a bathroom door and felt like home      imagine

becoming what is needed

//

in my mother's mouth

           a chicken wing alive
between molars        cartlidge no
    longer holding hands      she leverages
bone to her bones
     exposed teeth
  breaks free the marrow like fire
            flies in a humid august and somewhere
a cicada cracks its spine
         in half and the soft white waits for blood

my mother uses
  the sharp brown split to pick
                 free the meat
     caught along her gums       it would
             have rotted       sent poison to her
  brain but she has turned
               the pieces of flesh         if bone can be
 a type of flesh           if a chicken free from
                        the coop sees its wings
   as unfreedom           as anchors
    as what is needed
          to be cut off to serve
what kept it stuck to the ground

                       maybe in that moment
my mother is kind
                to clean them so thoroughly      to see
   each one as worthy
       until all nourishment is sucked free         making them do
their work for her
                        when there is nothing
like a meal left she folds
      the pieces into a napkin     petite
                   fragments of satisfaction     begins the process
             again
                    a brother    a sister     and I am uneven with jealousy

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Graham Irvin’s work has appeared in New Bile; The Tusk; Tenderness, Yea; and Vagabond City. Follow him on Twitter (@MadeOfAntz).