You could reach into my voicebox
and pull out a fistful of ammunition.
You could reach into my larynx
and pull out a dead canary, X’s for eyes.
Come see me spitting spent shells
like sunflower seeds at the monument’s feet
scrap metal castanets on asphalt
clattering broken sambas.
You could reach into my throat
and pull out a hawk’s war song
retransmitted as sequencer bleeps.
You could decode these carnivore’s
harmonics, what it means when
1 rings out, 2 bleed together
like brothers, 3 evaporate
and never reach you. On every
harp string the ghost-note of gunfire.
Every harp string a cord in my throat.
I’m disentangling the vocal cords
that got knotted in the windstorm.
I’m stringing them up against the sky like chimes.
