Dot Devota, B l a c k W r i t i n g

It began I was molesting the newly born
when a doe brushed past
the window saw her offspring
inside in a flowerbox. A cat of cows came near.
All new species
in the home I grew up in. Two clowns
spied through windows. A boy,
who was an enemy of the clowns
went to the roof dressed as one
sat in a spit of leaves
that were red-yellow and red.

Blackwriting holds my hand by the handle
in the four doors of silver, one door
didn’t close, the silver surrounded
by a group of black teenagers
peering inside. The bells were broken.
Pushing of the bull into the wharf no bell sounded.

The handle pitied me for my fear
and my fear alone.

Each day I make a surgical incision
into the wasp’s nest a live solution
eloquence ruptured sorting minerals
for topographical scenes reaching for no other offers
the sponge splatters gradual return
I fork the porous brevity in which it exists for me
on a hook yellow eyes skewered, retreat to raw stone
gracious delivering me
humanitude, checkered and declaring
sight blackwriting has
mounting dissent.

If black writing smiles, I am more afraid
pulls my life’s treachery from a bag I’ve been holding
but is not mine, although I say it is
the sponge consuming what spilled
near it. Lazy babies at rest beside pitiful nipples
new moons in universal sky
what a planetary thing, cribs!
my mothering gene, she, my grandmother, was of mothers
and she, my mother, of mothers in virtual reach. If I made the baby suck
from a crowded tit
it was ritual proximity, to leak
grotesque, dismantling tits the blackwriting
a baby my sponge sapping what little
wasn’t given me for him
like a cave to a bayonet but he parted
his mouth.

Unable to practice responsible orientation
of the nameless death I am
filling the baby’s mouth
a sort of forced speak. In the wild
a hoof defiles the smaller examples
of sound through terrestrial nomenclature
driven to movement a labor
of one. The skeleton largely
unavailable endures. Superior voide
blackwriting is gaps in my education wicked was in me
given allowance as I grew older. Three species
to slowly follow
one fawn stalking an image of herself
blackwriting fur in the wild lap
Elliot, and yet the fawn didn’t respond
but to squeak past its name in the yard, not even
heaven in the woods
in the reflection ones sees blackwriting of the body put into a box
of interest. House cats bejeweled, the animal must adorn itself
if only with spit
and then stepping into the sun.

As the basket beneath a casket of pipes
shallow in open-air belittling myself as having been divided,
the baby useful nude
descended from ejaculative force.
Give me pleasure, in my surfaces hijacking space
and dull community. Not thy family, blackwriting
and yet I am the chariot most audible
in clouds assembling for one worthy outburst.
Pleasure give me pleasure! the baby held out his hands
his fists opening, closing, empty
eyesockets.

He could not recital wrongdoing
he was and he won’t
remember the rupture, one child creamed cyanide on the lips
of a lesser child not able to collide sensations
as the heat-transference of experience. Blackwriting too soon
eating marbled shell until the unfarmed bits of him
belly down become liquid. A small island at the point
of shore. The head of the island looking down on parts
she has no desire to recite, and by not
reciting, growth solders them from her.

To have final impressions, so the empty warlords.

Generation before all of mine. Elderly, its criticisms
take my softened walnut and whip the bulb forming on it
til it spasms. Then in conversation,
so it is a mild-mannered abuse. We are all
at line-up, caressing miniature poisons
to distillation. Flooding the midbits
so it travels
and forgets, taking naps in between,
then traveling forgets, delirious dolls
who have been held soft stones
persisting worry,
a glossary of hand-held objects
pet all day long until one grows
out of the day and sells it for parts.

Or as a carriage for a younger family.

Preparation for brutality of course
is not an exaggeration, but silence the only master
capable of beating its fodder
into bursting submission.

Follow this, the master says, eat this.

Not the symbol but rope hovering
above a deep ravine between two traumas,
like two halves of the cranium where one hangs unaccounted for
by eventual caretakers. A pendulum in backswing.
Glass for bright mosaic
blackwriting on the ledge praying before you. Overgrown mold
kneaded by bakers, preciousness rises into its basket
break the skin with two fingers
pry the steam out of its hole
coping later in deflated impressions
left glowing in a bed of young grasses and horse urine.

The last confusion is the hand’s—as it lifts off
of the inflammation, slamming the lid of an industrial pot
cuts the steam
as criminals contained in a ghetto
of its demanded temperatures. And what must
break thoroughly is fever into intelligence, the scrappy kind,
realizing it is of no personal gain, that laziness
and slight theft are, the mare one works,
the mare one thieves, to incorporate the cadaver into the procession
is celebration at most obvious turning away.

Fully and partially
from clever torture with small hands
muscle-memory calling aloud
blackwriting writhes
in pre-postmortem to be understood.

The dialect was of no ancient use, what echoes
gets shaved off like lint
gifts to the jetstreams and nuns, black and white rulers
where one inch is equal
to escape, water in its simplest desire
to travel downwards. By each millimeter
the most direct route
until, if it could, be the negative elevation.
Mammals tunneling beneath the ocean
bald spots bringing in more mammals
mules of artillery. Even that one
is impossible to defer.
To any bald eagle itching in the crotch of life,
plunging the claw beneath the surface and moaning
in one pitiful act of owning oneself,
zygotic stitch-clippers
alive on sills of a baker’s ratchet-face sunwindows
would plough eternal wheat fatherless
buried in the disgust of one sudden frost—
each farm hand begs
release the battle from its crib.

To erase the singularity of battles, the surgeon blackwriting.
At the point of incision
abduction of air
into windowless prisms. In the bruise of one grapefruit
plucked from the tree with Jaws of Life
the spectacular was neon sound.
Disparaging normative slumber, backwriting stirring with its ladle
a Needlefish to the warmth of excrement,
blackwriting pivoting on the head of that needle
and bracing for unification.