WEAR A MASK
They only had one victory, and that was over a rabbit.
It was up to me – the double person – to appease the
restless ancestors, ensure the blueberries ripen, bury
freedom in the mountains for those who come after.
My stork-face is to mirror your beauty, my beakish
chin to hide your crooked teeth, my eyeholes are a
slit in which you can insert a coin to pass through
grinding eddies of sky into the voluminous abyss.
My mask summons butterflies who’ll bring rain.
The fractal patterns on my wings sing a song only
a mathematician who waits patiently as a polar
bear for sturdy ice to form could possibly hear.
Egg woman, masked front and back, protects us
from biometric recognition. Horned and rabbit
fur-wrapped, her chant releases pulsating microbes
from the earth. She says the dead are on our side.
JOIN A CELL
ular organism
in orgasm a
hollow bodied
cello of joy
origami crane
aquiver after
pollination
alternate firm
ament sleepers
welcome
Author’s Note: This work takes its titles from Tim Blunk’s 1987 poem, “for comrades who ask, ‘what is to be done?’ during this particular historical conjuncture, a (partial) list of practical things to do.”
D.J. Huppatz lives and writes in Narrm/Melbourne, Australia. Recent work in Ballast, Exacting Clam, Fugitives and Futurists, Variant Literature, and Gone Lawn. He is the author of two poetry books, Happy Avatar (Puncher and Wattmann, 2015) and Astroturfing for Spring (Puncher and Wattmann, 2021). He also writes about design and architecture.