Hyperdulia - Matthew L Bettencourt
Mother of fair love, I look to you
let me roll my eyes back into my head and read
the scrawlings on my brain stem
slip my irises around that tower of Babel and look for
answers hidden in flesh trying
to learn what meaning is
Take into your hands the ribbon of my life
reach down my throat
with pale chalk fingers and
burn holes in my esophagus
i am still learning how
to take medication
And see the snarl of knots that keeps me bound
a knot metastasizes somewhere
in the hollow
of my sternum
fumbled in the fingers of
a child still learning the meaning of the word
rat’s nest
To sin, anxiety, and hopelessness
those canyons creasing my palm
and marking the carve of rivers
the storied history of a body learning what
twisted shapes it must become
to hold vice in its hand
I beg you, Mother, by your powerful intercession
curl my lips into vowel shapes
and wonder why i only pantomime syllables
wonder where words gain weight and wonder
why i perform open heart surgery on my tongue
my bloodsoaked canines do the work of unlearning me
And long fingers of love and grace
trace the outline of my ribcage and call that
a bone garden
steepled apple trees grow steelbar
branches
padlock roots
the gaps in between
are learning the exhaustion of
growing a prison
for a recidivist
an escape artist
Undo the knots in my heart and in my life
the strongest muscle in the body
the tongue
you might as well teach it the shape of knuckles
how to wed itself to a sandbag and dream
of learning how bones
feel when they don’t ache
from tendons slipping out of place
subdermal squid limbs
dodging the blow
Free me to love as Christ loves
if only i could scream so loud my lungs
claw their way out of my throat
rend my neck to a bloody stump and
dangle
bifurcated isthmus from my bottom lip
stretch for the earth below my feet
and settle
spent
on a nest of flint
in the empty
left behind
i learn what it is
to be weightless
Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for us.
Bio:
Matthew Bettencourt is a student, studying Creative Writing at UW Madison and working as an Assistant Fiction Editor at The Madison Review. His work has appeared in High Shelf Press and The Moving Force Journal.