We took other forms implied by our bodies,
unborn mice ghosting an abandoned town, small spines surfacing
in colorless fields, lurching involved with what
began to live. We were what we got ourselves into,
pieces of metal on a door. Silent propaganda
that was brutally indifferent.

     Snow fell
and one of us was howling. He swallowed something
like sky. He leaned and no one would touch him.
We licked the dictionaries that were still in season.
We hadn’t needed words in the riots of the early hours.
We’d forgotten the strangely familiar in our bewilderment.

 How trees could hold
nothing at all. How all that green withheld everything,
waiting for us to disappear. Nature was too close,
a charred bird in the hand was worth… Spoiled water
traveled incessantly over rocks like a condition. We wanted
property, a working hand. Opened, closed.