carnal

The body doesn’t do much to

warrant the distinction,

the system closed all breath and bone,

the muddled heart beating away—

the closed fist, the empty vessel.

We think we know the where and

what, spark and spook and

a whiskered chin slick with

steam and spittle, the cracked

fortune cookie, the fairy captured

inside a punched hole lidded jar.

We cleave to meat and mayhem,

the soft palaver of the pine tree

sparrows in the winsome, waking

gray, the wish wiped from the lips

upon a threadbare sleeve, as if

the words we burble were a separate 

trust from these hungry hands and 

shameless tongues, the raptor 

flaying the dove on

the thick limb that reaches out

towards the garage roof

neither sign nor spirit, just another

worker on the wheel of life.

Spilling bone and feather below

the altar of the appetites,

every blessing an open grave.