2 September 2004 | Vol. 4, No. 3

Coprophagy

by MIGUEL MURPHY

                         Is it

                         paste out of which the new world slithers?

Shit has a history & it's balmy golden

notes off a black clarinet. Damp &

leathery, funk matted skunk fur, sweaty

buttery nutmeat. That ageless passaging

secret of the body of transformations, godless

& medicinal. Why did they use it, the pungent

offal, and why did they think it could cure

bleeding & insomnia? Why does it say

in the Good Book: thou shall eat it

As barley cakes and thou shall bake it

With dung that comes out of man, in their sight.

How it reeks: meatsack brown & fermented

piquant solfs, sometimes small but always

offensive & loud, the nigger of screams

school children endured. Nausea this strong

also politically erotic, the envious sexual

blackberry of a slave hanging naked, his emetic

luscious grape bunch, so swollen you'd have to

imagine them pressed & torn across your own

lips, juice-broken, staining the chin. Velveteen

as shit sweet fruit, the mouth's lust for murder

lapping syllabavating in anger as in madness

cleansing the body—acrid as ammonia

under tails, for creatures that have killed

also tongue beneath their own, wildly, erotically, starlight

not heavenward, but sphincter-wet. It's sickening

but to fear & to refuse

is to secretly covet. To admire heart-sourly & in private

mob, gang, horde,

crave. But what do we covet when we hunger,

What transcendent

fascination do we feed if we abandon

fiercely morality & eat

fire wind lightning dirt

tears darkness shit

manically triumphant death's

soft word?