Her cold tongue shriveled like a baby’s fist
When she slept. To be a cosmic murmur
After death, to be a banjo string in space,
She only spoke at the leering moon
When its fullness and form forced the night
To swagger as if made only of veins
And drunk on its own blood.
Like a tattoo of a fly on a girl’s wrist,
The tree lunges its branches
Through the slivered windshield of a truck
In a field of burnt cotton. At night,
She crawls down to the tree, bleeds into a jar,
And scourges the sky with her offering
For the fever that goads those to sing this song.