Where are the worms in my mouth brother in your mouth by David Greenspan

May 2021

Q: Please state your name.

A: A release. A release of tension. A release of tension in the jaw.

Q: That’s not a name.

A:

Q: Please state your relief.

A: Attention lathered upon, lateral against.

Q: Please list five references, personal or professional, who can speak to your bloat.

A: Self knowledge only goes so far. A faucet of eulogy.

Q: A jawbone of sorts.

A: See.

Q: Oh my / star. Chart / my progress towards / an absolute sense of / guillotine string.

A: All fish headed rumor.

Q: How are you doing threaded together so.

A: Anatomically correct diagram of a cat eye. Bolded red lines. Capillaries and caterpillars.

Q: Where were you.

A: Corneal abrasion, extraction.

Q: Stutter out your color. 

A: Shivering. 

Q: Two years is a long time.

A: Beneath my skin is a zipper. Beneath the zipper is more skin. Shapeless, without tuft of muscle, bone, organ.

Q: Endless reaches of lithium flavor.

A: I unskin myself and unzipper after.

Q: Water, in the right light, a food group.

A: I’m bored with the ocean.

Q: Can you address concerns over your inability to experience shame.

A: I was as much as anyone. Grafted and grifted the first time she found needles. Slouching toward death, both of us.

Q: Who was.

A: Others, of course others, but their names won’t be repeated here or anywhere. 

Q:

A: Not a mirror but a pane of glass.

Q:

A: A glass unspooled.

Q:

A: Puddles and thumbs.

Q: Are those teeth.

A: Perhaps abstraction soft.

Q: Can you add an indefinite article about the self.

A: Capital’s throated maw. Its inertia, bulbous and confused, tonguing a genital.

Q: Dear selfish chemical, do not resuscitate. 

Q: So here we are.

A: Mouth open and closed like a fish. Mineral clods its way out.

Q: Pulp spit and polish with care.

A: There is no blood without blood.