the tiniest bird has abandoned us.
it was the last bird
an almost invisible 
species and it followed 
the last leaf
which was so red 
it turned liquid
and blotted the earth.
in our hearts we know 
it will be like this,
how the earth will perish 
someday
the sun folding its chair
in outer space, the moon-clad
cold turning respiration to ice.
we burn things to forget this,
we talk around it 
and we eat the world as if our guts
were safety deposit boxes 
as if talking could replace
the death of the belled sea.
and so our hearts shrink
while the rest swells. 
dear heart, you are tender, the tiniest of birds. 
dear heart, you are red and you are liquid.
friends, if you miss these chances
to weep, the cold 
will come for you first.
​

​I woke up speaking crow
knowing the condition was
not normal but going with it
resisting nothing as my yoga
teacher would say and so
opened my mouth and let
the beak-words the gargling-
on-marbles-tongue out and
listened as it filled the 
morning to the brim with
charcoal and sharp edges
and went about my day 
proclaiming the invincibility
of numbers the flock of murder
but and beneath the jackleg racket
anxious about the impending night
dark air dulling dark voice
and the owls that would stalk
me shivering branch to 
shivering branch silently 
their spotlight eyes 
unflinching as the moon.
​

​then one day
all the listening stopped.
you couldn’t hear the last
door shut, the ears
falling off made no sound
and dropped 
like shriveled apricots.
it was easy to destroy
the birds then, to say
they never mattered
to crush the chickadee
in hand. the stars still
meant something but
when the wave came
we never knew what 
hit us. the smashing of
guitars was chordless
without a sad, low note
the guns took us
as if in our sleep, the trees
fell all around but, as we so 
often joked, they never
really fell because no
one ever heard them, yet
we wandered empty 
among the stumps
and ran our fingers
through our hair as if trying
to recall the texture of 
leaves and grass. 
all these things happened
and worse but it started
small, innocuously like
someone clicking the 
receiver on an obsolete phone
such a tiny, final sound
it began like a whirlpool
at first wide we imagined
we could hear the entire 
world breathe then just
a city like us, then a street
like us, then a house filled
with us, how the faces
all looked the same
all said the same prayers
the more righteous 
the more alike 
then a room jammed
full of I with a capital I
oh the narrowing,
the winnowing until the only
things we believed worth
listening to were our own
thoughts and they 
took us down.
​

it is true, I was born a monster
an inkblot, a dark bird dropped
down the chimney, I crawled
out of the forest and traded
places with some human
child whom the bears have
made a meal of, I could tell
you of the surgery to remove
the horns, the evil eye
the two left hands, and my
tongue was sewn together 
so that I’d speak straight and
not stutter the location of 
the Fruit of Immortality
which the living must not know
of, or be drowned by God. 
all this, then was assigned 
a place, a name, a home
given a ticket, a middle initial,
a history, a genus, a species
a nickname, a social security number
a gender, a haircut, parents
a neighborhood, Christmas presents
bruises, language, insinuations, flags,
and lots of thin little lines in the palms
of my hands to tell me where 
I should go. they call it a lifeline
it’s human, they say. 
you’d think it enough, but 
no one was fooled and they all
spoke behind my back
and called me beast and the 
goats stared at me queerly
with their eyes like coin-slots.
I tried to fit in, really I did.
but lately haven given up hiding 
the stump on my sacrum.
I tell you 
my spine was so sinuous, it had
its own language, a kind of nobility
and my kingdom was unintelligible. 
why should I settle 
for these cardboard boxes 
you’re selling?
I’m ugly but no fool:
why squat when there are 
fields made of birds
to lie down on? the rain
arrives kissing me because
I hold out my tongue. 
I know of colors that would
break your heart
if your heart were shaped 
not like a cage but 
like a bowl, the way
mine is, if your eyes weren’t
always cataloging. 
I’ve reclined on the fields
and when the birds flew
off, drifted on the emptiness
like the pie-plate moon.
I am full of rain. don’t try
to understand my heart, please.
silence is a texture, a taste.
some of us will never be known
and the act of belonging
is a species of violence 
which all of you, every last one
is infinitely guilty of.
​

​they said: make an effigy depicting your demon
then burn it and in burning it the demon is destroyed
and so from the paper of old roads maps
plaster of graveyard dirt and smashed walls
plucked hair from a bear at great cost
teeth of nails pulled from churches
tongue made from a necktie stolen from a politician
the paint, unmentionable
fingers, toes of roadkill snakes, of fish-spine
the torso a rusted drum dragged from a landfill
I assure you
Frankenstein was assembled more humanely
had a prettier face, his electrodes polished
at least but my demon, no, it was built
in the dark, blindfolded, fumbled, not a single 
candle assisted by so that 
the darkness would be full untainted by the Light
Corrosive. and there it was—taller than I in more ways
than one with its red tongue and frog-bulge eyes
burn it they said, do it now and when I touched the 
box of matches saw Abraham with a trembling 
dagger and I saw an eagle goaded to rip
out a certain liver and all manner of scars
carved on the faces of youths to make them
Men and make them Women. what are we really 
burning? I asked the matches and aren’t you 
tired of this, This Great Pretending? 
I mean, I see people shooting wolves
because they are themselves wolves I see 
saints chased down by their own shadows
and beaten to death I see mirrors
looking deeply into mirrors, blemish
without end. 
so you people of flame
when I disappear from the campfire
into the cold-forged night nothing will forgive me
for taking up the new moon’s beautiful darkness 
and making a mask out of it, and wearing 
it in whatever damn way I choose to wear it.
​

my voice 
grows slim in the
slim seasons; all the
echoes have died away
and the loneliness of
the world is exposed
for what it is.
someone is whittling
a stick down to
nothing; the geese
and cowards, all fly
south. I prepare to make
a bed of ice, to sleep
alone, the way we will die. 
it is strange to me, Durga
how now, more so
than in summer (which
stands on top of the
world and sings with
all its birds at once)
I feel the roots of your 
fingers most tenderly
knotted in my heart.
​

the crickets are still singing
and despite all Accomplishment
and the defection of the trees
and the geese, fleeing with nasal cries
it is still summer, you cannot tell me
otherwise, it has not let me go,
is lingering by the river like a hippy.
‘let’s take another dip,
it’s like this every year
they never let me finish
& in two months will be whining
about snowshovels, counting 
days like it’s a sport. 
they did this, 
complaining too much
about humidity. well, screw
them. it’s just you and I
and these watermelon seeds
like usual.
I said it last year and I’ll
say it again, 'till we're down
to the last cricket. ha! who needs 
them anyway.
​