BONE-EATING SNOT FLOWER
by Erin Robinsong
The ocean is as close as the cunt
you come from & now it’s like we
never met, some irrelevance far
from our star, the metropole
where reality invents its reasons
to save ourselves from, reasons
that are warfare, laws that are
criminal & take lifetimes to undo
tho a nanosecond of its face would
be enough
In a wet labyrinth of breath
lent by forests beneath the sea
the sea throws a bone for
Osedax mucofloris, the bone-
eating snot flower to exist
in this wavelike world
Waves can’t help it
they keep speaking
the tongue is a wave among
waves with its mouth, a vestige
protective wetness for waves
of speech around which
arranges the face
to face
reality
Which one
In this one, your wings are
actually your foot
and the you who dies
at the beginning gets born at the end
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Creator photo by Andréa de Keijzer
Erin Robinsong is a poet and interdisciplinary artist working with ecological imaginaries. She is the author of Rag Cosmology (Book*hug, 2017) and Wet Dream (Brick Books, 2022), both winners of QWF’s AM Klein Prize for Poetry. Collaborative performance works with Hanna Sybille Müller and Andréa de Keijzer include Polymorphic Microbe Bodies, This ritual is not an accident, and Facing away from that which is coming. Erin grew up in Coast Salish Territory, on Cortes Island. @erobinsong on Instagram.