blackmail press 25
Kate Camp
New Zealand

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cast down - mephisto jones
Kate Camp is the author of three collections of poetry, Unfamiliar Legends of the Stars (1998), Realia (2001) and Beauty Sleep (2005). 
The totally artificial heart

Into the woods she ran where trees as big as forks as big as trees
Were eating up the night in slobbery gulps.
It was backwards crying where oceans wriggled into her face.
It was a form of beekeeping where the only thing that made her peaceful
Was the notion that her home was on fire.

Where was she, yes running by the side of the river that ran beside her
Completely ignoring the things it said the blue ducks bobbing on its surface
The brown fish so sought after by her enemies.
Everything was hollow and contained every other thing. Every thing
Was stuffed full of other things, sucked them and swallowed them
And the raindrops that made it through the canopy were squeezed like worlds
Within a body. A body made up of worlds. But that still didn’t make it a universe.

Wherever she travels through the town she encounters eyes
Some are good at looking one way some are better at looking the other way
Some are infected with words while others decline the privilege of
Education. Bandages are applied to those too frightful, pained and
Pessimistic. Bandages are applied and reveal their useless miracles.

And when the wrappers were removed she saw the wound was healed
The wound that had been her mouth, the twin wounds of the eyes
The sealed holes of the body against which the bees butted and complained.