The crescendo of a silent chord
In a hollow room
Carved of rain
Three push, three pull
Tearing at the black sacks
Too lazy to turn for snow
Pick handfuls, throw greens,
These Lutheran profanities,
Go unshod and hair-sighted
A map dark with
Broken-shinned strides not taken
In the barely icy rice coast
Crowbill carrion and a bleached
rifle stock
For the empty umiak
I have only ashy long-gone words
A short-headed grammar
of polyonymy.
I speak contempt for the shit crows
And splinter
Eyes
Splinter
Knees
Splinter
Blood
Splinter
The laminated ritual-resistant
Artefacts of smoke
Smuggled from a harbour
Changing its name
On a rat ship of soil
From harvests still to come,
Jellied seeds and the winter's ache,
Where only the crows grow fat.
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