Immigrant Story

You want me to sleep
with you and saints
in a dark cube
where lightning has killed a woman’s body

It came
in an animal form
with thorns in its eyes

It was monstrous as heaven

You say it is nothing
but  a bridge with facts
albeit charred
the windows overlook seas     you point out
See, you said
playing Tarot cards
we can eat our toast in bed
we can waggle our toes towards the bridges
the river in human chains
when the bodies
push news of fires
forward
into the city’s stretched guts
of newspapers
blown

I don’t look forward to walking
in the city’s dry creekbed

I said to a severed head
of lettuce

knife in my hand

(the erosion of everything solidity congealing the dead and green leaves clutter motionless, shrouding, still, hark, the calls of birds bursting, gusting she follows give thanks, paint )

 

And I looked at our child
sitting on the stone floor    he knows

a tiny minotaur
the flies      infiltrating his nose

thinking of our necks as two fat slices of watermelon