One Poem by Alex Benedict
Skillful Acts of Hatred from the Aural Sewers
From Cherry AndrogenousA thousand nipples protruded from my body
Every nipple needed to be milked white milk
My body overflowing with milk was swollen like a jar
The jar smelled of white rabbit
— Kim Hyesoon, “Child’s Nostalgia” from Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream,
translated by Don Mee Choi (Action Books, 2014)
All nipples.
So many nippled words
and silences with smashed
petals like so many needles and stares
and stems snapped from too heavy flowers and arcing
light from that body that is
all nipples and all eyes
. . . . my jealous spirit
which salivates grace, this body
that provides for all its needs.
The tugged at, the pinched skin
of its sloping, plastered walls. Your words
scratched into its unfeeling skin.
The words written as they are printed.
The Allmartyred, the Disinturned,
those pointed questions, their broken
fingers which crawl back into the womb
of you, who have no home in this world,
whose home is nowhere
but in the consolation of all mothers.
Alex runs betweenthehighway press and makes a living as a printing press operator. He is writing a biography on Cleveland publisher and poet d.a. levy.
