| PATHOGEN
This is how it passes: flicker of proboscis, puckered bump of dermis,
and then the fever, flush, delirium, mumble of malaria in the mouth, the blood cells opening like sad roses—
and then the slow speech of scent, the body perfumed with plasmodium, calling mosquitoes to the nape like a lullaby.
No, this is how it passes: the strangers, doped and cutting the land with a parched blade of map, pipes steaming with dreams of tea leaves, the ache of indigo, sown and slipping gold into their pockets—
the quick unbuilding of roots, wings, stones, assembly of water in canals, red-painted barges, algae purpling at the locks where the river holds—
and then ebbless pools, tepid, steeping. The larvae sleep, unfurl, the instars writhe to the surface. The parasites, blinking in their good fortune. | | ROTE
Our television man grimaces in a blue pinstripe suit. From the desk he says there is death in Iraq, nothing new on the news.
The overripe avocado sprawls in the blue bowl exhausted from its transcontinental travel, rotten because we are already sated.
Your shirt, crookedly buttoned, sulks in plaid, cuffs unrolled like smoke from a thin cigarette. Carcinogen detonates in your cells.
Cadmium paint on the canvas leaned against the wall gleams a hot lava red, like a car lit and burning.
Framed in gold, the painting depicts two crimson tulips, one wilted rusty under morning sun. Photograph from Wikipedia © Cecilia Galarraga, Pathogen and Rote, 2010.
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