Facts about Snakes & Hearts, a 2015 poetry chapbook by Flower Conroy

The Gods’ End in Godsend

If there is afterlife let it be this: the dreams’ physical man-
ifestation, the hunter taking back the killing
arrow, the animal panting, then
not. And you? Azoic fetish draped in gauze,

Guernsey lilies tangled in your hair, reemerge.
Hologram-like, in its process of crossing over,
the animal disappears into the black hole
of a cave’s mouth. Cave of bespoke

torch markings, cavern of dripstone & speleothem
& coolness you slink into. Prints ghost
the dirt, indicate deeper into the heart
of this frankincense & myrrh pit

but I lose you. Find instead ocher splatters on a boulder:
crude silhouette as of a lichen brain or imbroglio
of rising ptarmigans or man-o-war & what does it mean,
the centipede gods, the fly-eyed gods? The animal

sips from a stream then lies at your feet. 
Here, where moon milk & angel’s hair poison
& a breakdown entombs
trespasser & spider alike in mindcore,

I ponor to you a shadow of myself, hands of thunder & blood,
the quiver strapped to my back, empty. I kneel, scratch
a fire. Crackle & smoke, the light climbs
over itself & awakens in the quarry, a stampede of eland

mammoth bear lynx eel jackal gwagwakhwalanooksiwey.
Here indistinguishable from hereafter as night from sky,
I aim my bow at stone, imagine blade piercing into
the alone as you pagan into their tapestry.

<<Previous                  Next>>