Conner Fisher, Athens, Georgia, USA
I am swallowing the language stump. I am following its mother-traces
along the axis of wheat. It sulks in my brother’s little kingdom.
He is as mute as a painter. He kneels in mud like an ox and snipes the
mountains from his steaming harbor. His borders waver and break
like ice, concealing the questions softening underwater. The
language stump doesn’t know we exist. It’s prolific as a mycelium spore.
It’s prolific as a genius of the inquisition, as a child with
the calloused skin and black eyes of an illuminated tramp.
*
I am swallowing the language stump. Its broken path is endless.
A speech tentacle manifests its blunt repertoire. I gargle with
cephalopod mouths. Translucent as an insect wing, I unscrew myself
from the spruce affliction. Like the curdled fabric of a real body, kneaded
by oars until fluid dribbles out, I am descending the seven
rungs of the black ship’s belly, where I will noiselessly eat flame.
Connor Fisher is the author of four chapbooks including The Hinge (Epigraph Magazine, 2018) and Speculative Geography (Greying Ghost Press, forthcoming 2021). He has an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and English from the University of Georgia. His poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Typo, the Colorado Review, Tammy, Posit, Cloud Rodeo, and the Denver Quarterly.
