I’ve had enough of gods of dipping lips
to pondwater & receiving soundless ripples
in response Let this psalm call to my body
instead How she stiffened in his arms
Became phloem & marrow then phloem
again A field salting itself before being
plucked fallow How pinned beneath
him she witnessed the hoopoe stalk
a pair of nightingales The hawk lance
voles on its talons The thrush shake
seeds from its feathers
My body my
thorned membrane is there a story where
he not us tapers & snaps into a new
shape Where we leave him an uprooted
reed to shrivel on the sun-parched bank