My body is a functioning gravitational anomaly—
I know more about the workings of a swamp
than my own esophagus.
I am ninety birds of all shapes and colors
tied together at the feet.
Every action I make creates another me
with a new history
like some kind of time siphonophore.
When I bleed,
I swear I see black under red.
A sort of oil. My father’s I believe.
He is my greatest mystery. He is perfection
but he never put perfection onto me.
I’ve asked him a million times
if he is human and he responds
with a fear of humans.
My mother placed a trickle of spirit in me
that engulfs my mind with water.
She is the reason why
I require simulated waves to sleep.
I move through the clouds
they leave behind, like moonlight.
I drift on each heirloom ripple in the sky.
I land on each blacktop before the end of each dribble.
My body is an icicle
in the process of splitting a frog in half.
I spill out like heat on the highway.
I make this world a vessel,
I drink and I am drunk.
I feel most at home floating
in a diamond mine deep below the earth,
the closest I will ever get to distant space.
Henry William Motto is a poet out of Seattle, Washington who just completed his MFA program at Arcadia University. He has been published in Z Publishing's Best Emerging Vermont Poets and he is looking to have his first manuscript published. He has been leading a nomadic life style for the past two years with his girlfriend Shannon, dog Ozwald and snake Cleopatra.