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2020 Joseph A. Lohman III Poetry Prize

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Polymorphism

by Eli V.

I am split  a frida kahlo portrait nails driven in my spine pulled apart and eaten out a polymorphic organism under growth trailing over her forest floor. she slips a livid tongue behind the skin of my ear and entangles the soft hair into a cherry stem branching within this eastern redbud spine. her fingers pull on my toes and she whispers lovely lovely at the endless roots flooding these bed sheets of moss and caterpillars, tasting metallic and somehow sweet. she laughs and refuses to nest beneath static eyelids so i ask instead for her please sing me a  song I am divided a walt whitman poem sex burned into each breath bent over and taken by the neck a polymorphic organism overhead hanging by his envious foliage, wrapping  my legs in a snaking embrace. he is holding my hand asking darling do you remember a time before the wolf’s den caved in like quicksand? and I shake shake for the pack is relentlessly poisoned, water tainted from the river between the blue mountains, his ravenous skyline watching with lazy eyes absent but kind. he sounds like a song bird singing a duet in the rain and i request a slow ballad for us again



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