Litany of Joy

Poetry

I number how joy comes out of the body:

  1. wetly and staining in knotted handfuls;
  2. on the breath, from the deeps in irrhythmic booms,
  3. or startling in eddying fireworks;
  4. leaping from the lips in song, or
  5. to embrace the joy of another;
  6. out of the eyes, shining slyness, or
  7. hot overflows of damning truth;
  8. from the gums, slowly, in an itching eruption;
  9. gathering its essence in slow circles of the tongue before launching itself, dry, to be wrapped in another;
  10. excavated from a back surface (your skull, ton cul) and presented to you by surprise;
  11. expressed from the nipple by manual and oral stimulus;
  12. snipped from the tips, or
  13. clipped from the scalp, or
  14. clipped from the ends of your digits;
  15. shed in all corners like fairy dust.