Breath, and: X

Abstract

Breath, and: X Lance Larsen (bio) Breath Snakes bless our gardens with their muscled hurryslip in and out of the underworlddust of the earth italicized and fanged etc but who bothers to pick one up let alone coil itinto a mood ring that circles the pinkythree times except some boy like this one shirtless nine years old going on thirty yearsno probation who already has a packof feral seven year olds watching and a reader looking over his shoulder decadesafter the fact and me looking over yoursno way to step outside this alley behind the butcher shop this rosary of decayhe has already pouredthe snake straight into his mouth and lifted his arms to the sky like a kid on his birthday ridinga bike with no handsgo ahead call this symbolic but symbols have a way of swallowing the interpreterthe snake diving one inchthen three down the boy's throat before he pulls on the tail this happened before snow conesbefore shoeswhat is a boy which garden where does the alley end [End Page 85] questions more endless then the serpentwhich has lodged by mistakeI wish I could say snake equals darkness and that biting in two what chokes ussets the world straightfirst the pulsing skin then muscle and bone like crunching the banana peelbut this slows downwhat happened a panicked boy crazy for air I wish I had a story that fast forwards to a swarthyadult drifting the Midwest like a hailstormno he remains what he was then the boy who ate snakeyou should have seen him spit and spitthen chew grass to kill the taste meanwhile and always I stare at the stump endate eats will eat has eaten is eatingwhich tense lies the least a lost Saturday a story that wiggles on its way downa snake instead of a tongue the boy whoI am and never will be that boy before he let it drop before bravery or shamebefore breath that stump thrashedthe air a definition trying to strike the right word [End Page 86] X Something dumb in me attempts to spell the deathof God as crucifiction, as if the cross were a liar's art, then I catch myself, delete, and supply the necessary "x."Spell-check, appeased, agrees to look the other way. X stands tall, crossed arms multiplying what they touch,a mystery, a quality unnamed like love or death. No, love in death. Also place: treasure buried deep.But for whom? Some days I half envy my greedy cat— sleeping off this world, an infidel whose purrs and thirstsand rutty mewings sing. Of what? Ditto my life. Let me try again: I'll write His death by hand till shamemakes prayers of what boils my blood. I'll hum. X—two nails, a sign for those without a name, a kissto be redeemed, a sideways cross searching for a god. [End Page 87] Lance Larsen Lance Larsen's recent collection, In All Their Animal Brilliance, recently received the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. He is also the author of Erasable Walls, and his work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the Paris Review, the Southern Review, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2008 University of Nebraska Press