no peeking
I use to gawk
at the sycamore stocks
as though they were more
than gods, though now,
the world pared down into
souring flour, the sun
shafts just too sharp
to suckle—though, see
how a matchstick scratches
a shadow for something, sulfurous
tangrams tired of twiddling
thumbs to unplumbable
numbness,
some smug cinder snuffling still. How
the puzzlebox onion’s core’s afforded
a flame’s shape, only
should one but
cut it and
cry a bit. Awe
contorted to fear though
clearly as somebody bending
a bustling skull back into a scab-
black lobster’s bratticing
asshole,
bratticing what twixt
spirit and bark and
conduit twisting as
snakeskin sharpens—dust
of what darned stiff
as a firescreen flickering
here in a sun beam, bracing
or tracing or beating as
bones beat raw, as the
timpani’s tenterhook sides sag
softer and softer to tones so
low they’re mistaken for throttling
cat’s paws clawing up tenterhook
bean stalks, over which all my a-
ccordioned onion-skin and pin-
stoked sentiments splutter, so
woefully, wonderfully wind-struck
