By VALERIE DUFF
Iron mallet, shield of glass. Our
genesis a crucible of gas
and condensation shot straight through the aorta
that took on color, luster, gorgon dreds
when one of us reversed and sampled godhead.
To be a wilderness, unstable viable
Medusa spawned right there, shut down
to rock and filled the holding chamber.
Pulled particles developed mass, insisted on
a stallion’s eye from iodine and salt, and spat
out cracks, and lonely, spat out code.
It arced from her decapitated neck.
Her hair knot slipped, a heart began to beat.
His hard wings shook like candles.
Valerie Duff is the author of To the New World (Salmon Poetry). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Common, Solstice, Ploughshares, and AGNI, among others. She is poetry editor of Salamander Magazine, and she’s the 2015 Poetry Fellow at the Writers’ Room of Boston.
