A SERIES OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS

About blood: it’s only one means of being alive.
Every living cognitive doesn’t have or use it 
to transport nutrients & oxygen.  Sometimes
creatures use alternative systems.  This means
there are ways of being alive that look nothing 
like the somatic supposition opposite death.  

To be dead is something else altogether.  Blood
is not always red.  Sometimes, in these othered
living cognitives it is blue.  Like in some species 
of octopus.  Which is to say that blue blood is 
not the antithesis to the lowly regular’ed red blood
& blue blood is not ascendant.  Nor should be.

First blood announces a girl body’s readiness 
to make more bodies, except when it’s not. This  
is when blood is shed from her womb, zealous as 
a changing tide, since there is no need to shuttle 
nutrients & oxygen.  Other mammals absorb the 
unused tissue which is, apparently, another way 

of bleeding. For dogs who release at least something 
ferrous & in intervals, the primitive longing 
that prompts the discharge may happen twice a year. 
A lioness in estrous may fulfill her need over 100 times 
a day with multiple partners at approximate intervals 
of 17 minutes. Which may mean loving & being loved 

can feel nothing or exactly like need.


Green Mountains Review

Volume 32.2