Dave Harrity
Threshing Floor
Whip of him & drip of her: dewy loin
& parts of wheat for offering: bran, endosperm, alurone, kernel—germs tangled
in her wool will eventually
get washed away. To bake his bread—starch & batter,
leave & leaven—to swallow down the barm. She lets go pieces of herself he could never cultivate—
same bright smile of spring stable
or winter slaughter, clots scrambled through the barley,
ragged jelly thick-poured from her cup of life. An amaranth, an herb—reprimand inherited,
desire for a rule—ark & omen each,
& he’s closer now to looking like the god
he thinks he is—the smell of blood does something strange to sovereignty: settlement ringed through her sep-
tum,
robe untied of salt & festered chaff, shrove & naked spread
over his feet. This gift, this gift she's hidden in her jar—mother of the living. This hex, this hex
he's pushed into her far—
father to the reddened dirt. How a rib’s arithmetic—
equationed sums to measure out the store, to calculate another life as yours—becomes
dominion’s stillborn demonstration: shuck & seed
slipped across the vetch, insides
slung and scripted on the floor. She's crawling up his legs to take a drink. & there’s no confusion
here—no tare between the whey & waste:
tangles, freckled thighs, shoulders
to the downing sun, pulsing where they've joined together, fell, & pulled apart. & water is blood
& blood is water—oat-spangles smucked
on stony ground so to divide, divide;
subtract, subtract: math of heaven, math of earth. She spreads his cloak & bleeds above the dust, inheritance
scythed
& laid aside—she gleans, bowing to a fallen stalk of wheat.
