In Cryosleep

---

The artery is severed, and the lizard

that dreams of being human colors

its tongue. While the eyes are closed,

the heart pumps its remaining quarts

of blood. The claws that opened up

the cavity are wet, and the lizard slips

inside the skull and is reborn. Speak.

It understands you. Its fatal embrace

will not stop until you promise not

to fight it, until you say to it, what do

I know? My mind is already slipping.

---

Gregory Kimbrell is the author of The Ceremonial Armor of the Impostor (Weasel Press, 2019) and The Primitive Observatory (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), winner of the 2014 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. His poems have appeared in Alcyone, Coffin Bell, The Dark Sire, Rough Cut Press, and elsewhere. More of his writing, including his ongoing erased surrealist verse novel, can be found at gregorykimbrell.com.