A Surgery Against Angelism Poem by Tim Lilburn

Set a fat layer of fire grazing into the chest of engine heat, breast-

stroking against motion perfuming from the sickness of volt swollen inhalations. Let

this heat sag to a half-eaten meal not its own; let it eat rods,

iron shavings, green stones, dead yarrow, words head-firsting

from a rock overhang in the upper right, a skeleton of a seal; let it learn to heave-hiss

through its mouth the complete psalmic blade.

Five pound fire gravities against hurtling's musk.

In the chest of engine heat, a concussed floor;

whipped light heads cough in blow's trampoline, and choir above their husks, they lurch

into a blurred but, yes, readable circle, moving, yes, the gear

that jacks the cranial dome.

You go into the fish's mouth which is Siberian citizenship,

into the fish's mouth which is the body of a cousin at the volcano's wedding.

We come out of the colon tunnel onto the ledge, sweet-looking antlers

to smoke from the cloud deer. We've built a shack out of this numbnutsness,
We've hidden in this long grass. A stick will cure us.

Your eyes in the fish's gut are moved like a wand around the dark.

The knife snugs down through skin. And this is politics.