My green grudge. My rotten tooth. French Quarters

Levee slang. Newsreel of the flood. Pour ash

on my neck. Slap. Pitch and shake while cinders

rise. As in tongue, that burble, that soaked gnash,

hung in your pink-plumb’s boom-boom womb. As in,

Styx, her cervix, that slag weight, crotch logic.

Styx, you,“slaker and drench.” Mama Styx, “Djinn

in the Vaseline.” Styx, Oath Maker, thick

thighs, grand thrall (we’ve consorted like minstrels,

fiddle sticks and gall.) Styx, mother-in-law

from my first marriage. Kip of the quip. Thrust

and heal. The dead live but can’t love. Rot. Skull.

Shucks. Styx, I love but can’t live. Return, ma.

Storm. Flood. I’d drown, again, in ash and dust.