The Barbed Wire Nest

They are dropping smart bombs on the glue factory.

They are sending saber-toothed drones into the bakery.

They are inseminating the migrant seamstress

And repopulating the mountain states

With mutant jackals and polyethylene waterfalls.

They are selling our skin cells to the cosmetic surgeons.

They are dismembering nude mannequins

And stacking the spikey limbs in the courtyard

So you can climb the pile and peek over the barbed wire

For a glimpse at the newly upholstered boardroom

Where they are declawing the help staff

And drafting the bill to outlaw the law.

They plan to kick us with steel-tipped boots

Then they'll stuff us with arsenic and gag us

With clumps of hot tar. They'll assassinate the cartoonists

And fuck each other on hardbacks in the library

Before incinerating the archives with antique flamethrowers.

They'll arm the snowmen with Uzis

And bury the bookkeeper under the mossy rocks

In the backyard With the beekeeper

And the beehive's desiccated hull.

They'll take a breach, have a smoke,

And paint our eyelids shut with organic honey—

So while I still have a face inside my face

I try to look at them with the most objective eye

And hold the breath inside my breath

Until a flood of light washes over my body

And when the body has been consumed

The server brings back my debit card

And the thin slip of paper and the almost inkless pen

And when I turn to sign the paper

The strap of my dress falls over my shoulder.

The pendant nest suspends the breeze.

The sunflower swivels its shadow.

Source: Nests in Air (Black Ocean, 2021)