Operation

I.      Breath collapses to the bed-rock of bones in some scale of

Forest system. Upturned ribs resemble gnarled roots outside

A prison. The trees are bleeding because they have been cut

Beside its fence. Adjacent, there is a dried-up river and a girl

Form resting above it. Their midlines run parallel, their dry-

Ness runs parallel. Both forms are engulfed in the shadow.

II.     The doctor dislodges stones from her asthmatic memory.

Surgery brackets a black forest beside recovery that the

Breath never crosses. Breath collapses to its bedrock. Valley

Stones could be notches on a lucid spine beside a prison.

River-body drought-dry mid-line. Disastrous stepping stones

Crack in a clearing.

III.      Pathogens split from the body start to erase its material

Existence. The shadow is relentless. Where does the body

Go? Into the river-bed? Inside the prison? The doctors issue

A frenzied statement: this is a side-effect we could not have

Expected.

IV.      Whispers linger where a girl once laid. The trees drop spoiled

Fruit. Her memory escapes subjectivity, pining after rock bodies.

Vocal chords become brittle. Words split syllable. The shadow

Devours language but not its substance. Nerves erode with the

Season. The prison discharges light through dry pines with precision.

 

 

Price of Entry

Follow me

toward the long field of data

 

where glass gapes in browned grasses

scattered by oblong burns

 

& the sun never ceases to shine

its expert teeth

 

bright breath

of pathogen and disinfectant

 

traverse the two-headed poles

of this seam