& the dead unmoor
themselves from the sky / & consume / the ground / in a language
of omens. another plea / clots / in the shape of an unmarked
grave. the last time i saw heaven / on earth was on the backend
of a white man’s frenzy. forgive me: the green coasts are elegized
with winter, impregnating / my head with shadows. god-
likes, extrapolating. listen: their jawbones / are humming
in the silence they make of us: like mythology, / like enamel. your
name settles on the curve of my tongue, & all the spiders i thought
i put away come loose like maddened fish running / from salt.
in this version, everything is upended: smoke mistakes for clouds,
men banish the mountains, God answers to blue / animals.
everything dead makes a bed for the living. these streets are filled
& filling / with the kinds of lore you witness
but cannot / feel. like bones, they carry our flesh into violent
& orchestral / reckoning / on account of occupying the space
between your window & the trees. listen: / even the gulfs are lighting
themselves up in mourning. black / persimmons unravel
where your body once did, / & a penny decays / in the fountain
of my spine. my father said, history has never repeated
itself. / the earth evolves but the world / holds residence over the lawn
of our necks. how do i explain our lives are reshaped / & worn
like pottery? my father taught me how to take extra care /
with delicate, bendable / things / & yet how do i begin to write / my body
is a warning when our bones were split long ago / under
a noose, when batons calcified in black erasure dangle
over the stool we tiptoe on? everything is partial;
in this version, your skin burdens biology / & bundles like a ghost
in possession of me. blood to my ears, bones / in my gut. my body
wrought across / an altar of wolven / insatiable hunger. my throat
beating against some highway in defense / of breathing. veins
rivering asphalt. / & it all comes back / to the name: each of us are
cradling sulfur like an unanswered prayer. / listen how we writhe &
blow / weeping like the crows & the deer: perishables, / gutter. i am
                        everywhere, & then no one at all. listen. listen.