The Brooklyn Rail

Last night, I wore a bronze broadwing hawkfoot around my neck and a peacock feather in my ear

I am addicted to birds

some birds are addicted to beads

satin bowerbirds have a surprised blue beadeye with which they seek bright items

and gila monsters, which are beaded, are addicted to dreams

of venomous lizardy things, never

dreaming of themselves as beaded purses

Seamless

dreamed purses purge themselves

to become beaded lizards again and

my dreams are about birds but when birds

dream of me we cross mid-sky like

two fist- or wing-sized black holes in flight colliding

(it’s not-light self-corroding) then

passing each other eye-by-eye—

My dream says Hi

The birds’: Goodbye!

Then I dreamed of dazzling trash-eating lyrebirds who herd

jewel-colored blazing beads  & hover

over evolution, gate-crashing  the divide

Delicately positioned mirrors track the squeezing and stretching of space as gravitational waves go by

Two black holes slid toward each other making

a pig’s big

nostril holes in the sky

One big snout

sniffing out space

Did you hear the rattling antennas?

My question is

is it rhythmic?

Time wrapped around you in a

snug dark glove and you

fell loving out of light like —you fell

out of light or light

rushed out of you

When a mass 31

times the sun

and one 25x collide

they create a smash-hole of 53 solar masses

—I’d say you’re missing some.

If three = thee,

that is what you hear now hissing, not the fridge’s home

hum, not the sound

of money gushing but the chirp of

ancient space

like gossip-sound going sideways across dark

lake-ish skies

(what gossip does space make?) Does it rhyme?

= = The breathing in of all living. The

exhalation of the dead. ==

At the uncrisp edge, space

twists, divides, and time

trembles, scrambles

and leaks like weather

Did you tear yourself out

of the visible universe?

Yes, one day I did.

from Your Kingdom

You: a tetrapod

sarcopterygian

scavenger

hunter

gatherer

in permanent delicto

so good at eco-niching—

will show up and smash the ovens

eat the cakes

Listen, therapsid (beast-face)

Get the molecular memo : :

every heart of every species unfolds
from the self-same germs : :

the blue whale’s slow car of a heart,

. a pygmy shrew’s

. or bumblebee-bat’s hasty motor

going bluestreak, breakneck, lickety split, dazzles

. the earthworm’s pseudoheart’s wrapped around its pie-hole

. and the triple-hearted cephalopod

pumps blue-green blood through all its chambers

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  

the shape of your heart (if human)

is similar to a pinceone’s

and is about the size

of your fist

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  

if only we could learn

how a zebrafish’s broken heart regrows like a strawberry flower

just turned delectable

fruiting

over and over, press it

to your lips —

the little muscle closes up its wounds in seconds —

I’m sorry to inform you that your resting heart rate

and a cockroach’s are the same

my heart’s electrical output reaches out

below the line, squiggling

like a tadpole-

tail in black and shows

its shadows of hurt (“probable previous anteroseptal” attack)

but not its

affinities and loves