Hydra

Cut one neck and the hydra answered with more. The swamp held a many headed serpent, old Greek heat, mouths opening where a mouth had been. People backed into the reeds with a hydra gift already in the hands, the knowledge that the blow had fed it. It comes back in hydra playing cards that multiply on the table, in a hydra notebook whose line splits when you look away, in a hydra postcard of the new heads rising from the cut. The water stills. The necks do not.