Body In The Nest
That which can be used to kill
can be used to dig.
A triangle head
and two jet black eyes
are burrowing.
Six inches of slender.
It wraps its spine
and snaps its jaws.
It is always ready
to defend solitude with violence.
In winter there is metamorphose.
The white creeps from the stomach.
Soon the entire body is white.
Soon nothing is seen.
The weasel in its body.
A Ring Beneath
Before it was buried,
before the lawsuit
claiming doomsday,
before the acceleration,
wars happened above.
The bodies fill it.
Particles flung through bullet holes.
The armies march
ever quicker
in opposing directions.
New desires raise new impact.
The enemy is always there
but he’s always changing clothes.
Nemesis must be met.
There are recordable results.
Small animals live above
hunting and hiding.
Digging into time.
Their bones vibrate.
Their teeth are war.
Dodo
I negate the day.
Cut myself out of the world
and do the work of defining that
which is this removed portion.
To speak of invasive species-
brought across climates
by accident or as gift
to remind a loved one of home.
Nothing in the new environment
recognizes this plant.
The ivy engulfs a hill.
It only takes one creeping vine.
Phenotypic plasticity-
the ability of a living thing
to change its physical attributes
to become better suited.
Some plants may grow a deeper tap root
to suck more nutrients
or some unfurl broader leaves
to consume more sun.
An enlarging self.
Creeping positive displacing negative.
Predatory plants-
birds drop the strangler fig
seeds on top of canopy.
Growth begins at the branch level,
roots growing down.
Often killing the host.
Leaving a hollow tree,
pure exterior.
Dusty descends the dodo
from the grips of extinction
to stand as the moments double symbol-
dead and dumb.
See the large land dove,
thick beaked no natural predators.
Ill suited to anywhere but its isolated island.
Comes man
with an onslaught of
dogs, pigs, cats.
The nests that litter the ground
easy prey for a prodding tusk.
So easy for people to hunt,
though they tasted terrible.
Within 100 years of their brush with western men
the last dumb dodo dies.
This pain-
the expulsion of everything that is not self.
I creep out into my negative.
A diminishing me allows
the world its perfection.
Only my eye
and words
tell me otherwise.
I want to live in the world of my negatives.
Push the inside out.
The bone to hold the skin safe.
I want to eradicate these borders.
This flesh of location.
When the empty space part in an atom in my hand
touches another atom’s empty space.
What is touching the limits?
What identity isn’t violence?
A ripping away from all that is not it.
What is this false unity that holds me whole?
Who could be singular in this flow of energy and time?
∞
Jeremy Springsteed is a barista living in Seattle. He was one of the founders of the Breadline Performance Series and is one of the organizers of the Chain Letter Performance Series. His work has been published in Rue Scribe, Mantis, Make It True- Poetry From Cascadia, The Paragon Press, Pidgeonholes and Pageboy.
Follow him on Twitter @breadlinepoetry
