Robert King

I know the origin of rocks, settling out of water, hatching crystals from fire, put under pressure in various designs I gathered pretty, picnic after picnic. And I know about love, a little, igneous lust, the slow affections of the sedimentary, the pressure on earth out of sight to rise up into material, something solid you can hold, a whole mountain, for example, or a loose collection of pebbles you forgot you were keeping.

It's called a port, a harbor, haven, home, a city on the coast of my chest opened for a passage into my heart—which we say is where emotions live—and it's embedded, slipped into a shallow nest of flesh, a bump, a lump under the skin on the right so the narrow street can reach the marketplace of the aorta, receptive to any incoming ship, needle, boat, barge, unloading its spices, crates of dates, barrels of poisons, Etoposide phosphate, amethyst, amaranth, Cisplatin, amphorae of wine and olives. I carry it secretly under my skin because it is easier. I carry everything under my skin, so lightly I barely notice, watching from the ramparts the dangerous rocky anchorage below where goods and evils, bundled together and tied, arrive, waiting to be unloaded and poured out into a welcoming country.