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My Height in Tortillas
taking me over in thin slices as if a hot flat pan
see christs face in a tortilla
powder and liquid made solid to wrap around
like crystalline information put into eye sockets
as sound demands a receptor
so fungus grows on the sides of trees
as a symptom of gaps in the soils stories
maybe the mountain that exploded here hadnt taken all its vitamins
since not all meteors are created equal
some alphabets have less than ten letters
for a fingerless hand can be flexible as a tortilla
encouraging whats held to melt and spread
or employ its curiosity over the micro-texture
coz i wont eat anything perfectly smooth-- i cant hold onto
it would slide through the tiny spaces in my cheek
my teeth so smooth, my tongue so particular
it needs a thousand commands to take a single step
even eggs give tribute to friction
as they try to defy momentum
as the brake on my car requires a texture so complex
we'd get lost there if it became our territory
the falling earth melts because it has so much contact-- a list
of names
longer than a litany of decommissioned saints, names of people
who may have vanished
to pour into a classroom i need to repopulate
to generate the conditions that created a meal i almost forgot
the taste of,
a chain of digestion like that loose atom in a nuclear pile
when all we want is steam to turn the wheels faster than all
the hamsters in america
as if a glacier of frozen batter slowly melting in rivulets
we can scoop out, heat and eat
though thirst will kill you faster than hunger
if rain was food instead of water all architecture including
our bodies
would be so different even gravity would have second thoughts
about how it spoke
waiting til someone was paying attention
instead of just sneaking up to pull me down hard
on a stone mat with words that press into my composite flesh
the complex amino chain of homers odyssey
or the life of buddha/christ/mohammed evaporating into the heavens
to keep returning until the whole planet is immersed in an ocean
of food
crust hardened by the sun, so much contained yeast
selected by the random roulette of past geographies to go dormant
in its own lack of circulation, or yeast bubbling a planet within
the planet
worm-holing out to a new population breaking its fast with the
morning sky
blinking open like s startled cyclopean eye
the egg our sun is the yolk of, the wings of birds
swirling in galactic center just half way through a migration
down this long table circling the planet like a belt about to
unfold
as if each star is a place we can spend a lifetime shopping,
excited by the ideas of all we can make when we get home
©Dan Raphael
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