A Lesson in Brutality

By Amy Jarvis

my teeth chatter inside my mouth,
a cathedral, brute & mutated. prayers come in halves here, my fingers bloodied & raw, ancient & atrioventricular. my history

as my own person begins & ends in the underneath, each thorn grown moist & sharp in the center
of each palm. when asked about the last time
I created without convulsion, I think

of my home inside womb, webbed & elegiac. a gathering of sorts, my atoms porous & whetted. my hands rooted in earth & soil. albatross flying due north while

I am southern & slitted. genesis soundsan awful lot like genocide when your fingers are purpled & poisonous. every flower pitted & warring. this is warlike at epic proportions,

unmoored seedlings sprouting & spindling
at a drastic array. I am godless & revulsing between each breath, heart hooked to machinery that’s rusted & rivaled. I am surging beneath

this fluttering, a muttered self. I am dampened with blood that cannot be spilled. genetic pre- disposition to violence, I say, & then some. & then some more.