The body doesn’t do much to
warrant the distinction,
the system closed all breath and bone,
the muddled heart beating away—
the closed fist, the empty vessel.
We think we know the where and
what, spark and spook and
a whiskered chin slick with
steam and spittle, the cracked
fortune cookie, the fairy captured
inside a punched hole lidded jar.
We cleave to meat and mayhem,
the soft palaver of the pine tree
sparrows in the winsome, waking
gray, the wish wiped from the lips
upon a threadbare sleeve, as if
the words we burble were a separate
trust from these hungry hands and
shameless tongues, the raptor
flaying the dove on
the thick limb that reaches out
towards the garage roof
neither sign nor spirit, just another
worker on the wheel of life.
Spilling bone and feather below
the altar of the appetites,
every blessing an open grave.