Furnace

Now
The only thing that can be taken
has

Those small mornings
with so little left
A gesture
A sensation
A residual smell that cloys
A curl of hair stuck to a cheek with sweat

Life has closed over
Still
No deficit

The dark blue bird folds its wings
The sky stretches a little further
Some earth blackens
White ash falls
The circle excludes what can’t be eaten

The prolapsed womb of the universe
continues dragging down deities

White knuckles in a pretty hand
with lilac veins and bitten nails
and a curl of hair stuck to a cheek with sweat

The enormity of a singular image
in a morning where bridges hang slack
against a backdrop too large for the stage

A white bed with green sheets

The wisdom of martyred prophets rests
at the bottom of the ocean to graze hulls
Skeletal wreckage awaiting
a spawning
drifting to flower
Polyps
gelatinous hands to cocoon an ache
against a dry wind clothed in language