My tongue is 621.37 kilometres long

HOSPITAL
(still working on this...)


1.

like an ape afloat in an isolation tank
they think I am a duck

stick a needle into my feathers
send honey to my pâté

2.

I am one with my viruses
wear my infections like music

my brain holds the things my hands hold
their hands hold my brain

3.

if my tongue were a thousand miles long
it would reach 621.37 kilometres toward home

the shadows say when they
poke me with their doctor fingers

4.

I fit in the world the way I fit
inside my body

or when I’m surrounded
by sunscreen

5.

the beach is enormous boulders
now become sand

I, too, am a castle of penguins
my bald pate flattened by blue spade

6.

the ocean walks a Darwinian joke
a salty frottage of walls

my mind roof-of-mouth ripply and shell-strewn
as all of me recedes, pressganged by waves

7.

bubbles on my doubloons
their deepsea operations cousteau

my sunken chicken
I am not a nervous wreck

8.

my body is a pressure change
a presentiment of rain

I tie no laces of thunder
in the heavy shoes

9.

what the


10.

my brain is a moon ajar
a great wheel whose song

bumps distant continents
and returns

11.

I mean
a great whale