Understudy

By Kerry Cox

two-tone teeth, never sleep
in mouths that always dream of meat
Chewing hard
spitting out bones
Ballooning the moon
Till it fits in gods arms

Those famous limbs
That built Rome in a day
Pulled out a rib
and gave Adam
A new name to say

Archangel artifacts
Older than truth
Come back like the haunted
Crumble like youth

Sucked up in spades
The winters old rays
The breathing,
the heaving
The uphill both ways

My veins are a trance
Where iron
and salt dance
In a liquid romance
Called a pulse

The pressure loose and light
Until it’s time to fight or take flight
Or simply disappear
and call it a curse

Fringed feelings faking
The holy wafers still baking
The lepered souls still making
The best of the worst

Argyle answers in books
Made of matches,
burning through bushes
crowned like a cactus
A single star
when the night was the blackest
The chicken says the egg came first

Capitulated calcium
The gums become more numb
Debriefing the teeth
In the land of sleep
Before the cross is hung

Don’t beg to be remembered
I’m an encyclopedic heart
Afraid of the verbs in a bibles black arms
Ventricles blamed for the burst

Time moves different
When you’re living this way
Guilt grows wings and
still limps away
Two tone teeth
With nothing to say
That doesn’t sound
Rehearsed

Kerry Cox is a Seattle poet who spent 7 years in New Orleans writing and performing poetry. Her poems have been published in Journeys, online whispers & [Shouts], origami condom, On the Cusp and received Honorable Mention in Anthology magazine's annual poetry contest. An aspiring poetry therapist, she facilitates workshops and writing groups using poetry as a healing tool.