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A softer sound than the crude
x-ray chirp
of a sparrow or blue-bellied
finch. Violet crowned,
I can never not hunger
for things less tethered to earth.
It is through speed
and lightness that time slows.
Beyond that red-billed rhythm,
I imagine your inner weather
is nothing but wind,
an irregular albino sighted
against a dark scan
of shadows. Imagine being
fed, head first, to the mouth
of a machine. Each organ
a confused margin of mass,
more piece than place,
more pollen than beak,
a whole bitten flower breaking
down inside that bitter
landscape
of a bird’s pink muscled grove.
This is how matter moves
through the body, like memory.
All the daisies
picked in health, a whole
childhood of dust-sleeved
fields of wheat, gone gullet
and swallowed whole.
I have nothing
but sympathy for the tender
neck of a tulip. Seen
and unseen. Above, there is
a sterile sky of plastic
and that sourceless voice
telling the lungs
to breathe, exhale, hold.