Sucking the sky’s leather to a pulp,—
Memory’s patchwork in the skin fades,
We string our throats to cotton
And lie our mother’s sword in a grave,
Open-mouthed for the digger’s cross-legged scalp,
Trying like gnats to forge a miracle from all fruit’s rotten.
Our hands cupped in the wind, —
We return like larks to the humming avenue
Lined with winter flesh and black mayflowers;
Unlocking the vaults ribbed in the clouds to dew,
Arriving like bat-winged eskimos to find
Girls skating breathless on Ocean towers.
Here the leaves stroke the fiery throat, —
Here like a paw I drove you desolate,
Left you crackling in a charcoal square.
The voices cover you as they plumage the air,
Your glum paralysis stiffens the coat
And like shorts on a chair we let the clock set.