Two Poems by Caitlin Roach 

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JULIA

not phlox, not bract nor tern
nor the black-clot whirl of mass
it becomes of, unreturning. there
is infinitely many so the going
of a few in-falling matter weighs
not heavily on nor matters much
to anything. I is self-regenerative. I
accretes in the dark middle of all
these invariant Julias, splitting of
themselves in a dust cloud, a line
with a nose and a tail and a spine.
perhaps the rhythmic blink of
the wood frog’s nostril, the tick
of its gullet-pulse or the intimate
violence of the strangler fig twined
with itself unwittingly, to its death,
or the swell of hackberry globes
reddening like autumnal scars.
perhaps retinal inkblot, red-shifted.
perhaps plum meat.

* italicized lines are lifted from a description of Mandelbrot and Julia sets

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IN TREATMENT

 furred & silver-felted, self       
-sowing to the point of becoming
            a bother–  no mind to me just
beg of me to touch,  just
     drink of me as if I were
                curried,  some song
        in a mouth–  cowpea & woolly
            renal vetch,  sweet wound
    -wort–   stick to my sucker
  -bearing arms around the mouth
             blackened at the rim
       & throat.  anchor yourself to
           this, bend to, unspool
     upon the surface–  inky
                   & all still I’ll stalk
         you.    abuse me–   I can take it.
      be stuck to­­,  suck what you
          cull out like that.  be of
                 me,    little swell.
               be gilded,    be gilled