Wunderkabbinatem
Fear offers these patterns. The blue-black feathers of rooster: gather them
in a letter never to be sent. Offer also snake, its blister and slough, then talon,
squirrel tail. Enough serifs now to call the tone pained, yet moving still.
Kept the settlement where I labored vague, or if it pleases, secret. Called
the actions there untoward, perhaps a little curious. Fear offers not a thought
toward keepsake, not a thought just a desperate rendering, a midnight gradient.
Saw a woman asleep in her hands in the grass, took a photo and grieved
the wilt of her face, what sight would lose. Like the way I watched grandma’s
eyelids dead, waited for the snap, then nothing, but then, was the brain yet cold.
Let a man say the place I was born was a village, as significant as turf beneath
his nails. Let myself sink nameless in a city. Wet the garden daily, plucked it
clean of weed for weeks until boredom found me dumb and wont. Fear of
skin, fear of vigil, fear of the hand now gone from my lap. See the house rots
with foliage even now. Once I kept the same broken-necked swallow in a shoebox
until I grew old and redundant in my skin.
Dyspnea, Inc.
This house will do me no favors. Already I have hooked
twine to the walls and tug.
The dream is to be dilapidated, pleased among the mess
of fiberglass, torn silk. That I wanted this to be love,
a man stands like a factory over me
huffing until I want you to matter, sugar dry in my mouth.
What to do with all this midnight. What to do
with the dusk in this state when I have no aubade.
Breaths fur in my chest. I say a word, say sadly. Say
I want the granite to shatter finely, kitchenly.
So many mornings, we smile the heat down, pass
the bungled man, sip our coffee: then tedium, the bugs in my head.
My hair in busted feathers all over the office. These hard kinks
of breath: a man pushing his hand over my eyes: as if to beg night’s return.
