Crazing

Here’s the title poem from Crazing, which will be coming out at the beginning of August. (My apologies; I am unable to make the software reproduce the formatting of the original poem.)

Crazing

Cracked creek-bed

red clay crackling –

crazed they call it

it’s called crazing

and I am crazing

cracking open like a chick from a shell

or pressing outward
that’s more like it –

stretching
filling out

and the skin cracks!
Crazes!

Look!
these wrinkles
are the stigmata
of transformation!

Or de-formation –

growing more and more peculiar
as what is inside squirms
and pushes with its heels –

O lumpy skin-sack!
O my Africa!

mapping yourself outward
in rift-zones, thready tributaries –

See the glaze crack?
And the glazed eyes craze?

Yes.         This.        It’s me.