By Patrick Redmond

VI.

Pregnant on the
  mantle, the carved
    wooden angels have
        blackened by
            the closed flume
above
            the cello
between
            your legs.
One records this
   first in an efficient
      whimper. The cervix
        shadows the veneration of the wing.

            We left
the migration
            hue.
Inside
            you.

XI.

In its infancy a hand
reaches for the Deep
welled water-birthed sloshing-rhythm of Anatomica.
The whole body
specimen splays its endocrine
system for a steeple vision of
the inanimate
swallows during the passing of water.
The brook lies stagnant underneath the looking.

XII.

Lips to a spalted trunk lying on the earth, I light as embers
in my mouth, the sound of gulls in waves  are huddled in
flame. A birth of flesh. A minimal movement,
Lacan, kicking squat legs in the reflection.
It is the unreliable omniscience.
The cement sculpture of a man beneath
a saguaro without an upper jaw,  
half the head of something that once scavenged.
I remember Lacan
in the flagellation of feet towards
a body. A glow of dirty yellow.

Patrick Redmond grew up in rural central Illinois. Over the greater part of the past decade he has held numerous blue-collar jobs, while attending three separate schools when working towards a degree. His poetry may be found elsewhere in 4 and 20 Poetry. He holds a degree in English from Carthage College and lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Updated June 2015)