making a ruckus in the pigsty,                               inserting his rigid stick, in the Italian flick,
is all about beast-fucking. is all about a man’s zeal. cuddle in softlier:

             a woman enters a beast just by
             slipping in the nipple
numnumnumnum the bear-child,                        a peachy newborn who can’t yet see,
soothes the girl,                        her engorged breast,
and, still holding it in his mouth,           drowses, drowses.
                                        later,                     covered in hard black hair,
he snuffles his way
                to this very mother

          he’s a hybrid, isn’t he?
          both human
          and beast,
dragging round the mat his mother wove,   whining,  not even trying to go to sleep. he thinks he’s a human, too. by next spring
                               he’ll be a god’s child

rainbow petals and poison arrows rain on the garden
of prayers and songs,
             shooting him down.
                            when his skin gets peeled,
last year’s babe,        as if slumbering soundly,            is once again translucent peach.
the crazed woman,          desperately trying to unbury him,          trying to give him breastmilk,
                                   isn’t rare. it’s

       a hybrid, right?
       that the holy mother embraces in the Italian cathedral

Note: This poem references the Pasolini film Pigsty, as well as an Ainu tradition of raising and then sacrificing a sacred bear.