While praying I suddenly think of a swear word
a checklist of roses becomes a quilt
for a night of battered love no brickbats not
the thin membrane of bats their ultrasonic
thrums despite a scrumptious yolk
wallows in me a dapper mammal
mammal I was mammoth I am resting
on a hammock rocking me like the divine mouth
of a valved alligator the openings of toothy
beasts salvage me as if I’m a hustler of recovered
pleasures which animal’s throat doesn’t like
water I like wafers dipped in somebody else’s
water call me delusion call me a fisherman’s rope
I was never the slimmest amongst the slivers of hope I cut
corners on the road my body was once searched for folds
to grope my wings stitched by mother nurtured
and oiled now vanished no I didn’t cry because to fly
I didn’t deserve but those feathers my mother did
think about the souls wronged whose maws
must chew their own wings to hide
the quick trail of parched blood do they rest
beneath our stucco feet carrying the weight
of a beleaguered fate that befell condoms
and conquests before you invited the mist that sank
low to wash your sordid nests show me those
bins with black bags of smiling bone shallows shorn
of a femur’s consecration can you make my name bio
degradable say yours without vowels ask God
to peep from a ventilator while you disemvowel
at the end of my prayer billows on a bronze bitten
tongue the moss green smoke of an inward hum
about the author
