“Poetry”
A box that beckons
like a coffin filled with
lonely clouds, squinched
blackberries, other gruesome
trinkets. Balls of hair and feather
reaped from old brushes,
adolescent nests, lullabies like
stone.
Dark stasis of mussel shells
wanton herring gulls
cracked wide.
The elderly words inside already
devoured, leaving only
fetid byssal threads.
The caw and thud hobbles
like a phonograph stylus
over aging grooves, through metered
sighs.
Don’t turn me into a teenager,
bogged down with angst, nor old
man strung fast to the IV.
The scalpel sharp that cuts
awkward line breaks
into my arm.
You may not have my voice,
my caw and thud.
Not yet.
