InDigest
By: Brad Liening
Even if you do sprout wings,
how can you be sure that once
the natal mucus is shucked off
they won’t be spindly, bedraggled,
fused badly out of joint, bat like,
already weather-beaten, hammered,
chipped, doused in kerosene and
briefly lit, green, slicked back horribly
with carnauba wax, the cannulae smelly
and soft, dry and cracked, ivied,
tiny, made of tin and cheesecloth,
busted and tagged with graffiti,
or just plain ugly?
Flash of purple light:
a whiff of the ineffable.
Flash of purple light:
the bioluminescent lure of a predator,
a thing all teeth and digestive tract.
Unorganized cell masses mill about
before differentiating into organs
and organ systems. Uh-oh, another
nosebleed. Uh-oh, another epidemic
of epiphanies, all the light bulbs bursting
in one great wave, another village
buried by a billion unique snowflakes.
Surprise sounds a single sonar ping.
Maybe the celestial is just some
phenomenon that nobody’s yet
figured out, albeit a big one,
not unlike a beached whale.
Look, a kid in yellow trunks
is filling a plastic pail and pouring
seawater over the flipper of the universe.
But my god! where’s the marine
biologist? Uh-oh, he’s posted up
in a bar somewhere thinking
these stupid fucking whales,
propelled to a facile defeat
exactly like so much else,
all the myth and mystery gone.
Help me help me, you shout,
I’m shrinking! but your voice
grows high and tiny and is lost
to the roar of the juke box, your
objections fading to blue dots
fizzy in the tinny speakers
of the weathered Wurlitzer,
sand jammed into the coin slot.
And even if you do sprout flippers,
how can you be sure the pressure
won’t cause your skull to buckle,
that you can withstand the suspicious
substances dumped into your eyes,
that a button-nosed sock puppet
won’t trounce you utterly, leave you
cudgeled and senseless and lost
under a sun that will bleach
even the deepest layers of blubber?
Is the unfathomable then in the tenor
of defeat, timorous notes dispersing
before evaporating into the deep?
Ping. Flash of purple light.
We grow sturdy then feather out,
stalks of celery bending in blue dust.
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