Look here, our jury of conviction,
He’s tossing around his blocks of mayhem
Find me in the devil’s playpen,
Riding on a blacked-out tire and
Reduced down by the sweeping hell-flames.
❧
Upon one too many howls that night
He’d yanked the dog, by the chain, outside
The mouths of fires
Pelican-wide in their drums.
A sanctuary of larvae
Suspending under fronds.
Mallards dipping
Duckweed on feathers.
Gnarled mouthed logs
On the surface tension.
Look here,
Him crouched in the stagnancy
Knees in the lily
Like fleshy pads,
With their veins all matted,
The white-hot crack of sulphur split me
He prayed over the goddamn body
He butchered the sedge, cleaving papyrus
Roped the feet, dangled it from the branches
❧
Doves came down to us with scrolled messages
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,
They scorched up,
Scooped below our cloud,
Into our atmosphere
Where the marsh swallowed them down
