Jacqueline Boucher
In Antarctica, Blood Falls sits at the opening to a previously undiscovered ecosystem that evolved, untouched by outside forces, for more than two million years.
At the tongue of Taylor Glacier, a waterfall
named for bleeding scoops her belly out by tablespoons.
This is her most interesting feature.
I know this because no map has carved her ancient ooze
into its legend, no symbol for the impossible deep-belly
wiggle that thrives beneath the gash.
In this way, blood is a stagehand, bright of smile & dazzled
glove, a sleight of hand with the girl you might have been.
In this way, my body is a fountain,
& the seep of old wounds glitters, a bloody jewel. When men
in Day-Glo jumpsuits forge these crevasses, each axe
a telegram to their brothers to keep their wits,
to mind the path, how will they christen the landscape
hemorrhaging before them. What trick of the light, what drunk
puddle on the floor of the tub,
what tonsil battered to stone fruit, what shriek, what folding,
what blood, what blood, what blood & how will they choose
to hold the weight of such wounded baptism.
Will they be careful, with needle & leaf to chart the distance
from scrape to flight to grief. How will they tread through misdirection,
whole miracles unnamed in their wake.