This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 670,000 hits since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.
Showing posts with label DNA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DNA. Show all posts

Saturday, July 20, 2013

"She Holds a Dragon in Her Spine," by Christopher Fox Graham


she holds a dragon in her spine
made of steel and mint juleps
curled up kundalini in her hips
she rocks to the beat
in a to and fro touch and go
shaking the room to its foundation

she breaks beats like bread
"take, eat of this my body," she says
her blood is busy though
snap kicking extremities to their exasperated edges
like the last great explorer discovering a New World over the horizon
where limbs meet limits
and bones bend time and space
she's a gravity well
drawing the eyes of everyone into her orbit
like falling satellites
burning brilliance in her exosphere
yet unable to touch her surface
without being crushed by the pressure
but if she holds you close like a love letter
just about be cast in the fireplace
presses her fingerprints into paper skin like an undiscovered crime scene
your lips ache to be solved by her detective tongue
until your law and order lifestyle
begs for her anarchy to throw a brick through
your thousand blind windows

she fucks your shit up
like a pirate ship sailing into port
on Take Your Daughter To Work Day

when she grabs you and says “kiss me”
hold onto her like you’re bull riding
on a tight rope
on fire
you’re going to experience some turbulence
and if oxygen drops in the overhead compartments
don't bother gasping for air
grab a sharpie and start writing your name on your body parts
so rescuers can reassemble you after impact
don't expect an open-casket funeral when she’s done with you
she’ll leave you splattered on the sidewalk
from a car bomb MacGyvered from the teeth of broken lovers
and the bones of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
that she uses like toothpicks
because when the end of the world came
she said, “Is that all you got?”
The world's been ending since it started
every time some new gods come along to rename it
and give it their own spin
she just laughs and says
“Fenrir fetches my newspapers”
“the Seven-Headed Beast is my alarm clock”
“who wakes me at 6:66 a.m.”

she's the philosopher of the dance floor
but you can't stop her beat
her hips will just keep dancing
come your Big Crunch flashfire or your intergalactic entropy big freeze

the Big Bang began the beat
and now it's so deep in her bones
her DNA splices in rhythm
A-T-C-C-
G-A-T-T-
T-C-G-G-
C-G-A-A-
stretching into infinity
or until you're so old,
your bones refuse to move
disassembling into their composite atoms she swallows like an anteater to fuel her fire
and thump the universe into hip-hop heartbeat
ba dum dum bang
ba dum dum bang

can you feel it?
it sounds like god tapping her temple
or the rain
or the rapping talons of the dragon in her spine, asking to come inside
and snuggle alongside you
now, open the damn door