The Deck

Some mattoid is giving birth
in the city’s darkroom.

Her tears shade winter’s bowels,
and the feathers flossing the mayor

captioned laughter is cruel as this moon,
a craft of brewery, a craft of lonely spells,

A superstitious murder in the codex
homebound orphans count on,

Right to the point their rifled injuries
send them after one another.

In the theatre’s photo collage
I see a blue eye peek out

and two sunglassed children
parachuting into fences.

These panoramas are fashioned
digital filigrees, celluloid's medusa
hair , this fugue; and yet
the organ will play even on us.

I laugh and the fireflies eat
what I haven’t yet risked.

The next candy plume to be bit.
Our names haven’t been surrendered

yet, not all. Thank you for my candy cane
sweater, woman of indigo color eclipse,

I hope you read this telegram
written in invisible ink, pop lights,

and the peeling of these faces
in a clay factory where no one

seems to be.