THE STRONGEST BONES

sallow orange membranes of autumnal clouds
mumble across the vestiges of twilight drifting
in the willows of your eyes
I
hear the slumber of your lips
chilling against my quiet jawbone,
the sully bedsheet ghosts of your brushfire moons
crackling like the dry throats of crows,
a sweetened blackness in my ears.

I
bear no tattered evenings on my moist shoulderblades,
I
clatter about in clay vessels ashy and whisperish
straining against bedsheet ghosts who seem to know me
I don’t know them
and they mouth off and thumb their stubby noses at
I
heard the ragged paper shriek of doves’ wings
muttering in the foyer on blue terra cotta tiles
beaded with morning and stirring hoarsely in the fog,
green whispers, green orchestras
stringing furtively for unseen concertos,
rustling:
This is me, This is you.

see that, girl?
lines on my hands and ink in my eyes,
a bristling potent rebellion
of bones, bones.
no proof, no flesh,
bones and dust,
the triumph of bones and dust
lording and laughing drily like
sallow gilt fermenting on the brushfire
edges of moons and twilight clouds.