My stomach is of many minds,
it believes everything it eats.
My eschatological
stomach, a fundamentalist
of sorts, grows intent
at drawing blood from
surfaces of things:
ice-cold fingers touch its inner lining,
it lives in fear of confusion
The stomach clenched
its teeth, its nose bled all day
as I stumbled through snow
cracking theories of poetry
over its skull.
Gilded toothpicks,
sweet-sour pork
did a desperate violence
to its body.
It had to be saved, put to sleep,
but it woke early,
still restless with envy of the resplendent
spleen.
I will be good to my stomach
tomorrow: listen, and believe it
for a while. The stomach
is serious and unhappy.
It wants to do something really
symbolic: it wants to be
the ultimate
stomach.
– from “Journey” by Kathleen Norris