small textlarge text

Lizi Gilad

Alchemical

An infestation of fog
at the base of the lung tree
indicated by the fluttering
of fish in the kneecap cup
and a reported need
for eucalyptus, honey.
Patient emits disrupting
scent of ripe fruit.
Breath smells sweet and rotting.
Patient claims room air
is no longer sufficient.

:There is a thick file on my body.
I cannot elude the doktor but I rewrite
all bodily decrees
in egg white and lampblack,
distill medicinal essences
in an alembic, the proper vessel
for gathering bloom.


Petrichor

I build a room to kiss you in
it's already begun, I kiss you,

lick ash off your belly,
feed you toast and soft-boiled eggs,

pillows around a fire,
hot foot bottoms, little bricks

and jackhammers sealed in caskets,
in this room meats I've roasted,

a pot of stew, sugar speckled fruit jellies,
a thousand boxes we open one by one,

far bees, phosphenes and night light,
photographs of laughter, paper pulp

for rinsing each other clean, dirt
and broken firecrackers,

in the breath between us,
smoke and petrichor


Loud

my sky now sliced: a sound of aurochs stampeding clouds
aircraft are male tusked and metal

the drone and boom and break of light and sound

I'm tired of men telling me what to do
Conrad stop instructing me to masturbate

my insides out and talk to trees
my body is the only space I take the only place a poem ever occurs

the tree wrote a memo once I found on its skin
another barrier axed by man

is skin the right word for this sealing? bark is more exact
but I swear I saw folds and ridges and hair

long ago before dogs came to piss at the roots
horses sniffed and whinnied

it was a time of humming bumblebeed orange groves
I'm telling you what runs

hooves juice ink blood


Ixchel

she rose

warrior healer mother jaguar

shunned by a jealous sun
dragonflies sang her, circled

fill a bowl for the red curandera
baton the rainstick for sweatbath

look for the nocturnal doctoress
in cenotes or nightsweats

call to her: O
Ixchel, today I'll speak

bend my head back
open my neck

sit at the roots of the ceiba tree
comb the snakes

eat the word reckless
take it apart, fragile rabbit bones of it

grind klonopin to dust and sprinkle
into dirt like pink seeds

open my knees
like a man on the bus
like a woman, yes


➥ Bio