a thousand chasms all teeming with life flow through my veins. Genes, they do a sideways shuffle dance in my veins.
The invisible hand of a dead market stirs the contaminated fluid in my veins
a parade of planets marches through my veins.
I infect myself with my bacterial brethren
every being that ever was flows through our veins
we flow though theirs
and become light gliding through the cosmos amidst enormous carbon chains.
Translated by Jonathan William Beaton
Dominique De Groen (1991) is a Belgian poet and writer. She has published the poetry collections Shop Girl (2017), Sticky Drama (2019), Offerlam (Sacrificial Lamb, 2020), and SLANGEN (SNAKES, 2022). Her work has been awarded with the Frans Vogel Poetry Prize 2019, the audience prize of the Fintro Prize for Literature 2021, and the Jan Campert Poetry Prize 2022. In her experimental writing practice she engages with themes like ecology, (anti-)capitalism, globalisation, and internet and pop culture. She also writes essays and short fiction and is currently working on a novel.