dm

when it breaks it transliterates my name. when it falls i seek to breathe inside. seeping
clear hours or days, delivering handfuls of vigor, forcing bent ivy to decrease its sway.

the river bed is cold and broken. salt dissolves silently from fingertips. clams hold tight
onto a century of witness. old bones, once exposed, permit their hard edges release
into earth. the heart attenuates into a wand, a divining rod set permanently against a
sill.

northern roads deliver into a mist that robs the eyes and quells the ears. my father’s
land is dusty, old, and hidden. i wander without shoes, out to tempt snakes. without
alarm, alone.

the watch word is scarlet, scarred like the outer skin of a drum. tanned by the
redressing of a puncture wound. fibrous at best, tangential always, a hundred thousand
swarms of bees.