this suarophagus mouth
swells larger and larger
with sulphuratus sounds

the tyrant tongue hovers over one
tastes its vibrating capacity
proceeds to another

aquatic letters
like insects in the water
swim for hours on the margin
then creep over taste buds
touching them into sweet

I eat myself into difficulty
teeth cracking like fish bones
these tasty words
like fragrant spermaceti
I can’t spit out

exquisitely constructed vowels
green as dead yolks
dry in a breaking egg

over it
a head of naked skin
growing on a tree
adapted to putridity

she smiles
opens her lewd branches
demonstrates her claws

her story sutured:
hooks on the bamboo/
Malayan archipelago/
trailing vulture/

soft crumbling skull-shell
decayed by growth
the vowels escape
round and malleable

vowels with mouths like foetal whales
talk through their uncut teeth
soft and round coagulations
in the upper jaw

a gummy murmur soldered together
formed for yet incapable of flight
quietly sinks in
like a snake jumping up from the carpet
to slice its fangs slowly into a dangling toe
hanging off the sickbed

it poisons you into speaking
words escape from underneath
fatty rudiments of pelvis
jelly-hind limbs
gaped embryonic beak