Dave Shortt

Calcium

engraved plateaus
which emerged as backs

fish ejected from tailbones
soften in vinegar

earth stiffens into a porous pad
drying in stars’ carboniferous demiurge

potholed infrastructure is shown
how to amass supple yogic fortunes

knuckled-under vitamin D
puts up scaffoldings
to ossify durations of cartilage
unless it resists

youthful hydrogen’s ionic delights
season a chalked menu featuring broiled dishes
culled from ores & organs

immortal ice cream
plasters over the veins,
dear Io prefers that deathbed
to 4 white walls in Iowa

down the chute the ready-mix
of limestone ephemera will concretize
another nomadic death-flower

the myth of honeybee abandonment
leaves its sting on husbandry’s skull
in the lifetime of first backaches

far into the dentin
goats’ve eaten,
whatever surface hasn’t eroded
is ground away by teeth at night
in dreams of bond-seeking metals

passed through pelvic voids,
nerves risen above sea level
are masons in the nativity
from a pregnant sack of portland
of a baby girl,
boron-fated

cement shelters skeletal supermodels,
the odd rib is surrounded by absolute desert mud
sculpted into a lake of milk,
sucked dry by a marble child

‘am’ postures,
placid stomach stature,
precipitate from tarsals
& metatarsals

otherworldly as dolomitic hardware
is self hunched with capping idea

solid chemistry announces the birth of
diatomaceous industry, & Pepsi stains

‘from our ordinary Ordovician lives’

good Neanderthal smiles

a place reserved for the marrow

carbonated baths,
gleaming invertebrate shelters
(pueblos?)

solvents come of age
for inherited sugar troubles