Who grows there?, Recovery & no allegory by Emma Rose
Who grows there?
egg crack on the bench edge:
what glints within? fin-
-gers of rock, salt-sharp, crisp,
molars slicing tongue
mucus froth acid frost
I sit dirtside loosing
liquid, sticky alkaline drips
(I can’t open –
I’ll open)
can I swallow the yolk?
endure tempera on skin?
the thing grows thumb by thumb to meet me;
is talking tangerine; sing(e)ing pores open;
swaying the first stalagmite of dance; it is mush with bones;
hey – is that you?
Recovery
it is now
(it was always)
undeniable
what we had was abysmal
most wealth: thieved
most systems: requiring grief
& jobless, there is no bus(i)ness
to distract me from
the vomitous process
of recovery from
(say it)
capitalism
because though I’ve long been composting it
& growing other things from the pit
(and besides, I’ve longer been
too sick to be an esteemed participant
anyway)
the dregs remained.
my last guilty pleasures
‘being busy’ / ‘working hard’ / ‘independence’
must now be twists of skin sloughing off hands
dead and dry from all that soap dousing
disgusting things end disgustingly
I am researching how to love
I am refusing to unsee
the violence underneath
the euphemism, ‘collateral’
& I need you
I raise my disgusting raw
hand-in-permanent-recovery
I have so many questions
but guess who doesn’t run this
press conference anymore
no allegory
no ripe, no seed, no plucking,
flesh, stone, skin – no
juice, no pip, no roundness, no tart, no
sour overripe fecund gone to seed cloying dry spore
no compost nothing to bury
no folding into loam for something younger to grow
nothing you can spit out nothing that
fits in a mouth nothing you could
grasp
no allegory
just someone
knuckled fury resplendent
champing their brilliance
& you didn’t witness
it happened
it happened without you
Find Emma over on Instagram!
