Stephanie Chang
April 1, 2019
You pig-heart and I skin tapering off a drum face.
You conjugate, animal-throated magician’s girl
singing of avian flu & sestina. I touch the land
my mother cradled through the fever season
in a cobwebbed womb. As in a yellow body
after the blossoming. In a winged city, an ancestor
cleans the wound of our exit with red ink.
(I borrowed a future so you wouldn’t have to.)
Think inglorious flock of alchemists, wander
-lust boiling in a circle of knives. You ringleader.
Mind of all minds. Or bird-catcher: America’s
handmaid dancing during curtain call. Sunrise smile:
blue, gold, gone. Each iteration colder than the last.
All I want is to summon false legend. All I ask
is a seed and a piano to drown it. You slice open
the strings of a glass cello, tie ventricles around
the black pit because something beautiful might
surface otherwise. The woodlands never bled so
until now. You slaughterhouse. An orchestra’s
off-pitch hit. You riddled with light and carrying
all the truth this country needs to rupture.

Jenzo DuQue

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