Simone Webb, Dissolution, 2017 (Artist Website)
Giclée print
31 x 35cm
How life can be so generous
without ever realizing it.
He shaves away the rotting skin
of a young pig, saying Jove,
god of planet that shivers
like cotton fields, make this
our next meal. I wonder where
the god with blackened skin
has been, all of these haunted
years. I wonder if these words
feel like a rock on father's tongue,
fitting perfectly but tasteless, a
replacement for this lack. The sun becomes
a golden plate, an African king’s crown, and
our muzzles salivate for that, too.
Eventually the moon becomes
our platter, slathered with silver intestines
our dark bodies still reject. I learn the art
of heartache here, in father’s
shrinking shadow. He is homeland
squirming from my dirty kind
of vengeance, slapping me into existence.