Green Linden Press

Biliverdin Hum

The whelp is born a pale blue-green
and the dam licks it back to white.

Pale green as
the spiny bones of a gar. Belone belone
needling its way through rubin red sea-threads,
rippling carmine beneath surface green.

Placental tint of a pup and planet.

Trembling tail feathers that
tremor through to wingtip, the egg
green-blued as it shuttles through
the pressing shell gland.

Blood of tomato hornworm.
Wing of moth.
Raft after rocking egg-raft of frog.

Cresting the ridge, the scree slips.
He reaches for a handhold, forearm
colliding with a calcified outcropping.
Later, a green world blooms beneath his skin.

O, heme catabolism. O, hemispheric catastrophe.
Press us to attention.

James Thomas Stevens, Aronhió:ta’s, (Akwesasne Mohawk) attended the Institute of American Indian Arts, Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and Brown University. Stevens is a 2000 Whiting Award recipient, has authored eight books of poetry including, Combing the Snakes from His Hair and A Bridge Dead in the Water. His most recent book is The Golden Book (SplitLevel Press 2021). He is a Full Professor in the undergraduate Creative Writing Department at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2022