Tuesday poem #48 : Monty Reid : from Host

All

All worlds
are small worlds.

There is no other thing that could be human.

Or no thing
that could be human.

Wisp of.
Yaw of.

In the ducts of.


Dysregulation

Perhaps this is not the time to tell you about Toxoplasma.

That’s because you probably have Toxoplasma
machinery at work in your brain.

Most people do.

And Toxoplasma has no interest in hearing about itself.
It has no interest in the dead instruments of metaphor.

It hides within your cells and secretes a heat-sensitive factor
that dysregulates cell division.

It makes precisely 128 copies before it spills out of
whatever cell has been holding it and the phages can attack it.

But some always survive.

All of this activity can modify your behavior.
For instance, it can make you think you are something
other than what you are.

It could make you more affectionate towards your cat
which is Toxoplasma’s final host.

Cells always die.  And you have to get it there.


Instructions to the Phage

They are lost – show them the way.
They are mistaken. They have entered the shadow assuming it was something else.

They thought it was an object but it was only a thing.
Things are not objects, not the phantoms for the subject, just the think of it.

They have crept to a penetration site and transformed themselves.
They have released the serum that dissolves the tissue.
They have passed through the surface effect of the skin.

They have made a cloak of invisibility from the camouflage molecules snipped from your cells and distributed on the surfaces of the shadow.

And still, they are lost.  Show them the way.

Let them move deeper through the heat flux of the material
through the catenated tissues, let them be the space you have come to think of as yours.

Just because you hear the voices does not mean they are meant for you.
Just because they have entered doesn’t mean they have stopped looking for you.

You can partition the sensible all you want and they will not stop.
You are never enough.
Finding you is never enough.

Let them enter the phage that has been sent to kill you.
Let them breach the security of the skin.
Let them enter the wilderness and stay there.

Monty Reid [photo credit: Max Middle] is an Ottawa writer.  His most recent full-length collections are Disappointment Island (Chaudiere) and The Luskville Reductions (Brick).  Recently he has published chapbooks with various small presses, including above/ground, Apt. 9, Gaspereau, corrupt, red ceilings, and many others.  His new mistranslation of Nicolas Guillen's El Gran Zoo is forthcoming from BuschekBooks, and his poetry collection Garden is due this fall with Chaudiere Books. He currently works as Managing Editor of Arc Poetry Magazine and plays guitar and mandolin in the band Call Me Katie. 

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan