“hekatonkheires”, Benzie Dio

when you cry with fifty mouths
they push you back into the womb,
head by head. all i remember were
surgical gloves and the lack of foreceps.
my mother wasn’t happy they lost

the birth certificate, but the orderly
said it was custom, as was tartarus.
in a c class ward, before the flood,
you can lay them two by two. babies
keep longer for the journey:

forty days for the rain
forty weeks for the trimester,
and you don’t count the beasts
you leave behind. the upward
buoyant force exerted on a body

immersed is equal to the weight
of the fluid displaced. later
i find out there was a twin -
the dioscuri were dizygotes:
one immortal, one amniotic,

one you keep, one you give away.
a body is submerged in a fluid;
an ark leaves earth near the speed
of light with the other; the waters rise
past olympus, ararat. forty years later

the return trajectory is a rainbow
equal to the weight of the child
displaced. sure, i now have arms to hurl
a hundred mountains at it, but that
still leaves me older, empty handed.