The Cave

Mathias Svalina

Animals seek refuge in the cave that occurs in one’s body. One may wake with a raccoon there or ten thousands of bats. One may see three deer humping a sawhorse by the light of the full moon. What one knows depends on what one can see. For instance, one can see a woman in a black hoodie. Or one can see the IV emerging from one’s arm & the other IV emerging from the veiny back of one’s hand. Then one knows the hoodie, the IVs. When one enters the cave that occurs within one, one becomes the animal one knows how to be.

 


Mathias Svalina is the author of one book of prose, I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur (Mud Luscious, 2011), & two books of poetry, Destruction Myth (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2009) & The Explosions (Subito, 2012). With Alisa Heinzman & Zachary Schomburg, he co-edits Octopus Books.