#staunch and stymie that man into the ground

[danielriddlerodriguez]

THE MAKE OF A GIRL

—Quinn Elise Rennerfeldt

“I'm a fountain of blood. In the shape of a girl.” ―Björk

Overripe plum blood, muck in your mouth bite off your tongue blood. Brimming with salt blood, olive and pinestands blood, peace between nations and war spilling over blood. Ours is cool breeze on the bedsheets, get inside me blood. Mercury metal and velvet petal blood.

Our pores are full of wolf-hunger and shark-frenzy. When willing, we spill open to fill throats with cherry tongue, jewel-tone blood.

Blood, thick and lined, smudged and simmering blood. Basement flood, tornado shelter or bomb-bunker blood, bombastic and wilting, rumble blood. We are full

of it, ruddy-chested, brand on our haunches blood, iron-rich umami blood, drowning in a lung bag of blood, and only we can clot, can stem and stymie this

baby’s split lip, sister’s raw, throbbing eye, dam up the damsels and deluge. Only we can open the gate to free those horses from the fire,

lay hands to dead ground and come back with palmfuls of wormy topsoil, dowse the fever with bathwater.

We, bloodied by the moon’s eye, water-wed like the tides, studded with blood like milk like air like mouth like mind, only we

can shut a spitting lip, lay raw steak to skin, undo the husband stitch, staunch these paroxysms of man.