Christina McNISH

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IV. (A portrait of) a woman


a polar bear got into the house
out by the way where the garbage
cans lean on V's of ants
by way of reclination onto
the mortal sex

she shakes the ants of every
being's hole in which she passes
with an infernal weight, passing
the stone of gray matter and
meeting with the colour of
fist, which is pink, or anything
else you can appraise

there is nothing pink nor
gray about a polar bear,
no matter how creatures
speak of the soul and
its colours, spilling one
onto the other as a great
aqueduct of imagination,
dimming boundaries with
the endless rings

but there is one ring that
stands at all: aggrandized
hole, unmatched and given
providence, which takes in
as a toilet, then unloads;
a double-function

it is not a
matter of the throne upon
which the creatures were
birthed, but of the stools
these animals pass on

they grovel to, weighing the
weight from each paw to the
ground of the garbage-pooled
earth, sniffing other bears'
turds and meditating, holding
the fecal matter in their
wooly hearts.

these bears are true artists
the one which i know
came here by
way of birth, by rewinding
the body-mind tape of
a species


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