THE NARROWS
Lyric
drags us
along, nose-hooked
as cattle, a falsetto
hovers over
the stockyard,
a film of ash
runs through
the projector
where we gather,
a tabla, to feast,
roll the footage
of a bean sprout
uncoiling its
neck
and beak, still
gelatinous
in the eggs,
let’s have eggs
for dinner,
we keep making
ourselves at home
in our fright,
lead the ponies
by gunpoint
to orchards
to see their
horse
necks reach into
the branches,
nose for sugars,
sacrament of an apple
of an eye
of a muskrat
licking its filthy
paws clean,
when sated,
a slippage
hovers over us
like a deafness
where we thrum
and kite and apex,
until hunger,
our flume
of avarice,
our awful child,
checks our
unspooling string
with a hooked
thumb, narrows
beady eyes
on us, and starts
winding back in,
burying us again
under suckling
fig stuffed
birds and fish
tripe stewed
in tortoise
and the sticky
chromatics
of split fruit piled
and furred over
with locusts, their
methodology vs
ours, roll footage
of a meringue
oxidizing through
the forest surrounding
us, a tabla, holding
our rust punched
tins where dark
and sugars yeast
and fruit, a churning
scrim of infernal
insect wings
and wills slipping
against the metal,
and we feel it,
necessity, against
our palms,
and as a multitude,
we narrow
our eyes, bring
the fetid whole
to our lips,
and we drink.
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