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Burial Rites
of Owls
You
ask, Did we
change one another’s
bodies with
our
hands?
Did
something profound
occur when we
replaced the
blood pheasant
for our
heart?
I
am unaware of
far too much.
I
know it must
be a function
of childhood,
but I am also
not
content
not
worshipping
the chalaza
of an egg.
You
say, Tear open
the buffalo’s
throat. Fine
me 1000 yuan
a year.
Stump
the system and
have no extra
children, even
though
we keep
a rat.
You
say, The burial
rites of owls
are problematic.
That
you saw me walk
each day in
a different
dialect. That
falling into
conversation
quick-sanded
your heart once
and for all.
Yes,
I know that
even the simplest
dawn can compose
a
bloody compass
upon
the
monthly sheet.
Break
the wrist and
rest it with
this: We loved
each other.
We touched.
We
replaced
our internal
organs with
what we thought
was
wheat. We
came
upon
each other in
coming into
ourselves. We
changed
true
north. We changed
the way we became
again and
again.
The
Alchemical Trance
of Ants
I was stunned into becoming an
arrogated logician.
I had initially fought the alchemical trance of ants.
Postulates abounded about this Napoleonic war,
about that.
All I could claim was that her father had been
a hydraulic engineer.
And so I journeyed to North Africa and accepted the
dance.
I ate giraffe. I slit the purple tongue. It was chewy.
I recalled Lorca’s two graves, wondered how many
I’d already accumulated.
It was enough to shag even the black water fever clear
out of my bowels.
Someone offered me a candelabra, said if it was too
dark that they’d meet
me
at a public café.
When they spoke I heard Remedios Varo returning
the birds back to the
moon, threading them into a kind of sound rain.
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