SERICULTURE
Benjamin Landry
It must have been this world
in danger of bleeding into the next,
a muffled industry of want.
The ovules unraveled.
Misshapen gods spoke from the landing,
daylight unadorned.
No sentiment corrupted
by human voice.
Only the mites
dropping their burdens to breathe.
Only the tall clock
wagging its tongue.
In one deep corner,
a Turner espousing
two inscrutable elements
in a death-grip.
Each brain was a book;
every worm had its cell;
each leaf was a leaf,
valleys ringing with their rings.
We used to fall down
get up fall down.
We used to laugh
and call it the parachute game.
Now we cannot sleep
for the worms, the white worms
in their fourth shed,
their fetish of a meal,
their auger and churn,
their cotton-mouth time.
Accretions of solitude:
a wound stopped up.
It should not surprise us
that an empress
was thought to have tended
the first frame of worms.
How the cloth,
when she imagined it, shone
like a criminal’s dear viscera
in the sun.