Occupations
poem #96
The war of hands rages past the door; and families after the door, in unbodied houses, cannot scream having come open on waking — airless courtyards where shadows cower. The war closes over the coin, the coin’s reflection, antlered and kinged money in the low throne of the palm; but the war prior to the doorframe was a politics of prudence, balanced over shoulders — now the siblings wander in and out of undug trenches, thin-armed, patrolling in warpaint mixed out of light into each other’s lines. After the door, the war of hands annexes skull, annexes spine; old rituals of war remain open, half-done, coins slotted into eyes, eaten, antlers in the stomach, crowned the feet, awaiting final flourishes like victims of a music; whatever its new shape, the thing is led into the cavity where once the mind was throned; then the tongue, tired herald, tied prisoner without a face, old friend, toeing giddy at the saw-brim of the uncapped head, goes drowning in fresh darkness there.



I absolutely love the intensity and surrealism of this. It’s like a cross of Ilya Kaminsky with animalistic imagery
I am too literal to understand this, but I love its sounds.