In the current cycle of this hollow
ground there is a spring
where you hide blue
and in the mud. I will lick my way
through the gorged dirt there is a bison
on my neck. Do not frighten this beast
I will fashion a sleeve from its throat.
Do not be a monster I cry
out my palms until they glister.
If you put my bison head on
your map let me wallow in your mouth
my new breath is an incense
and benefaction. In your silent tree
I could lift you like a farther
similitude of olfaction my nostrils drip
singed wings because I am wheezing.
Fire proclaim me beneath your tongue.
O decrepit flower you are hovering
at my feet! Let me shape you
as a semblance of electricity muzzle
my broken cuffs against your cheek.
I am open. Your windows in a morning
without cadavered songs. Crawl through me
thoroughly or shut I am difficult.
Watch how the poles tingle
and through my shades I am lapidary.
If you remain in a meadow you hold
an oozing life. A burnt tree. This space
is a cube and you are my filter. Drip
my devastation. Is there a better gravity?
If you can be contained
in a heart I will have to have you
coat my walls in light. The paintings
strewn in the mud foretell abstraction
is a type of curtailment
in absence you glow your sticky
truth. This love is fetid
yet throbbing as a face lined
in mesh. Reflection you have cracked
a hole through my eyes. Purring from a can
it will fleck quiescent in your arms moisten
this swamp enough to pray. In total stasis suckle
these directions I will conflagrate forever
in my heart’s puckered aperture.

A native of Iowa City, Josh Fomon is an MFA candidate at the University of Montana and serves as Editor-in-Chief for CutBank. His poems appear in Caketrain, Ilk, and iO: A Journal of New American Poetry. He also contributes poetry book reviews for Read This Awesome Book.