A bird flaps between us
hotpulse-frantic against our knuckles,
warbling of urgent intimacy.
Coiled around the bird is a snake
ruby-striped and gently draped
about its lover’s wings.
You know the snake.
It lived in your boot, once,
menacing your ankle’s pulse.
It left you for the bird: a canary
in the coal mine of our embrace
singing the honest blues.
From my grasping hand to yours
the canary ricochets like a needle
weaving through two slips of gauze.
We’re drawn clumsily along its path,
until two sloppy rosettes
converge in a sad bouquet.
It is absurd to ask how other
more auspicious signs
might have been procured.
The snake recalls your leather-sweat
and socks; it tells the bird
not to bother with such fakers:
no violence is greater
than to make a lie the truth.
The canary is unconvinced.
It believes a flash of ruby-striped
success could wake us up
to the impotence of numbers.
Its song flosses the gaps between
filmy petals, pours mortar down
throats and holds
a hairdryer to gaping mouths.
We know this, yet still we stand
lips parted in awe and waiting
like penitents for the host.
Show us, canary,
how to get back to ourselves.
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