What hovers above condenses below
And the vagus nerve has wonders to show:
Mill of the belly, invisible grind
Slick convolutions sculpt all they find
Smooth muscle contracts around traveling scat
As sensual as the yawn of a cat.
An abdominal chorus—how it gurgles!
Saturn’s own voice, corruptly fertile.
Cells split and shimmy, chromosomes boil
Identity settles, signed with a coil,

Written in meat’s salty alphabet.
Pulsing skin shimmers, scented and wet.
Eyeballs disguised writhe over a dream.
Our rubbery hearts, the genitals’ steam
Carbon dioxide’s vegetable tang
Ancient green song all vertebrates sang
Wet from the lick of valence’s tongue.
Leaping or lurching down star light’s descent
Trailing our dreams and our excrement.
From acids and stink the soul forges land:
Thoughts in our heads, and work in the hand.

*****

Elizabeth Hurst writes: “Below” was inspired by the concentration of nerves in our guts that functions as a second brain, the alchemical axiom “As above, so below” & “Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement” from Yeats’s Crazy Jane poem.”

‘Below’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Elizabeth Hurst is originally from Los Angeles and moved up to San Francisco many years ago. She lives out by the beach with her husband, Gerald Stack.

“Body Fluid Cleanup Kit, bus, Colorado River Discovery, Page, Arizona, USA” by gruntzooki is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.