JENNY GROPP HESS

THE HOMININE EGG

                     The truth’s in myth not fact,

                     a story fragment or an act

                     that lasts and stands for all:

                     how bees made honey in a skull.

                                     —Gregory Orr, “Poem”

I. at the turn of the lion’s skull  

   production was static as a nomad.

   it aged, this rattle full of shapes,                              

malevolence greened, pricked,                                   

                                    made basic, the globe

                                    as a cataract eye

sliding in a black groove,        

                                                                        hot iron, yolk,             

            a lamp turned on                                 in a sunlit room.

  it is as flour sits in the canister,                                                                                

                                                                        discovered,

                                     exact stagnancy between

                                     raw and potential.

  it is air, a pregnant tiger

  leaping off an olive-colored boat,                 

                                     breathing, pressed,                             

                                                                        a claw lodged in wax.

                                II. when bees make lions in the honey skull

                                                            they hum,

  barrels of flour

  greening, cataract

  sprouts                                                          

                                    how rearrangement makes for murmur

                                    tamed, glyph of perfect                       

                                                                        raw shapes appear:

  under the growth, blackened,                                   

                                    punched in,                                         

                                                                        eyeless soldiers                                   

                                    a mouthful of flour                                                     

                                                                        coughed out,

  population’s spare part,                                

  death is heavy and                                        

                                    a bounced check,

                                                                        a lunar expulsion,

                                    rich, a river thickened

                                    to oil, history:                                                 

                                                                        slowed

  dust coagulates into scum,

                                                                        miner’s hands

  pull a velvet cord between the banisters and                                                                        

                                                                        unwind the decision:

                                    the white dog in a snowstorm

                                    opens its mouth to reveal

                                    a glacial storm of red. 

                                                                 III. giant lions

                                                                        prowling about with

                                                                        bees in their skulls

put bees before honey.

            large and diverse

                                    the cream-filled cake bursts                

                                                                        like politics and dementia.

                                    in the tackle box,                                

                                                                        a lineage of tied flies

                                    waits like a garden

  and then straightforward through                                                                             

                                                                        the genealogy

  a flush of hot chips produces

                                    another warrior king,

  charisma takes the capitol,                           

                                    a can rushing down the river

                                    over a heavy

  spawn of fish, a car twisting                                                                                     

                                                                        torrentially around a telephone pole,

                                    as a bird pecks at the

                                    hand of a dead man.

                                                                        a blast of vultures

 drops down onto the landfill,

                                    a riflebird dances                                

                                                                        and the female sighs—

  rejection, a burst of utility                            

                                    leaves behind                                      

                                                                        a long gun where the river

                                                                        used to be.      

                              IV. a lion’s skull

                                    full of honey and

                                    drowned bees.

  wind over density,    

                                    twenty-five time zones                       

                                                                        inside the word minority

  question armaments,

  human breaths                                              

                                    blowing out the mouse’s lungs                       

  and knives singing                                                                                        

  in the dark market,

  a season of riots        

                                    at 11:59.59 p.m. on Earth,                 

                                                                        an earwig climbs up the side

                                                                        of a cantaloupe,

            axel out of composition,                                             

                                                                        a sculpture of a heart,

                                    an isle of grain untouched                  

                                                                        as the silence of viewing demands.