from Cynthia Sailers’ Rose Lungs

Rumen

I being who I am a human animal—Lisa Jarnot

I heard the eider ducks fly by. It was winter—to find it hurt standing out there in the cold. Only now am I subconscious of the glare, taken by rubicund faces. People grow out of the weather to drink their drinks
compass in hand. Farewell to carved spaces, ruled surfaces, this dead mass from the apartments. The skin of a small calf, new skin on a freshly painted wall. I was once a hunter. There are no trees in the photograph. I was however clear standing in a pocket with a voice, It is not about the birds. Turning to a door loose on its hinges. Hunched and hackneyed, I am gathered for being fugue waitress, a dagger stabbed through by imaginary hunger. I may shed some habit for the lustiest essential dream where I awake perfumed. I remember old companions. It is the same for abstractions: an hour I perceive and let go. I do not forget the pull of a flume. More than a heartshell or rosette streaked with copper—it is to watch horology recoil.