Plucked
2022the rapid race of red blood cells
I am told that like Theseus my body is or isn’t
anymore, a cycle of dozens. The rhythms and pulses
are external, a call from my father
or the president or Ms. Peacock
Teeth with yesterday’s plaque into today a ball
of polyester yarn that is always unravelling at five
I was wise I knew why slugs didn’t have shells to the Lord’s
prayer recited to a dead hallowed swallow that met an end at the bottom
of the storm drain in the middle of grass. Hope had said that our quotidian
had been contaminated, a sewer beverage box with a bendy straw to boot
I did stare through the grate with foggy eyes
where did your feathers go, O migrant martin?
Hoisted on a twig a vultered spectacle met with
a responsorial chorus riddled with the flagrance
of the tri-tone siren. I am sorry you did not go
gently (who does). Your existence as a carcass
an urchin of feathers marred and mangled
Soon after I encountered a pigeon hobbling under
our cherry tree now blooming, destemmed fruit
lost in the prarie grass and leaving a branch destitute.
What might have been a dinner at an aged chateau
binging and purging and limping
Trevor had said during library hour
that he envied avians because wings were escapist
I am sorry to say that cardboard and ancient grain
supplanted the sky all due to one wrong coo
It was seated atop a white stool we wished was oak
And you were so soft and I never could comprehend
your stoicism in front of the cassock. God never made phone calls
lest he disturb the diaconate purge and I seldom knew what
hyms were recited behind your holy smog (it all rose the same)
So you floated into the bloodied lance and absorbed it clean
but I don’t think that you could have sensed anything at all
A man jests atop the nimbostratus and kicks his left right foot
in the north south trajectory it could be make-up or a hat
he drops feathers from his testes pouch may the lord save those
below. All they get is rain sometimes. Tonight the sun was strong
and rusty and so I melted into a wheat field splashing gently
into stalks so tall from above.
There were corpses in flight that night. I think I saw my own
arm, a yale blue striped shirt torn above the elbow
and it was a torrent of limbs hailing down
I think they were all mine. Now the grasses were me
and I ran and ran and pushed but I was there and there.
What’s odd is that there was a pool. Chlorinated catastrophe
revealing the demon of the sun with chamomile pupils
You so gently gripped my forearm and tugged but
you left a gash. Three hundred grams of amoxicillin
and organ hymns. Some motif I had heard. Skin cigarette
stained and O it was so dark and I had lost my goggles.
Any rays dissipated. I was limp and it darkened
and I floated on.