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Children of the Snake
Gary Langford
We pretend we only give birth to children.
Each scream gathers us in.
The high-pitched sounds have other reasons,
tender skin and long tongues.
Do we really want to know,
to risk being wired up for other reasons,
to carry what others will refuse to believe,
invoking God to bury us?
Mothers need to think carefully,
of random dishevelled thoughts -
who will believe you? My mother went mad
in the court of snakes.
Late at night, they come out,
crawling over our bodies, drinking blood,
complaining about the lack of taste.
Is your skin punctured in the morning?
Have you ever felt jaded?
That's why. A microscopic examination
will show holes in your veins,
snakes yawning for that other birth.
Age is incandescent snakes growing larger.
We grow smaller, shocked and silent.
The weight of snakes holds us down,
bursting out when we're in the ground.
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