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July/Aug 2019 • Vol. XLI No. 4 • Poetry |

Bird Survives the Death of Nature

1
An obstacle to reaching over there remains sunken latency of here, where He who kills bees, kills public housing, memes innovation as meaning, translates into “kill we.” Soon as acceptance of an abject — the rest of us: twirling ashes, ashes, to the copyright tune. Now He watching you watch the clock run out bzz bzz. Everything they teach about enlightenment leaves out prisoners or my mother. To answer your question:
I refuse

2
Trees speak a language we could learn. To learn means to acknowledge you don’t know all the howls of how, all the yets to yet, all the zygote beasts of ferment; whether toward blue or transferred from yellow, all color requests to collaborate. Volume matters when we let the song exert. We can ask more than take.

3
Sun Ra says this planet is doomed. What if the subaltern set the parameters of heaven? There’s no such thing. An addendum to the thing: the setting of nearness betweens infinite; Toussaint L’Ouverture may attest — nonappearance filled with language, a hence of eclipse, burn being into Being. Now excuse me as I address my sisters, the extinct birds:
trtrtrtrtrtrtrddddd idjiojioiooo jdioowieouovvjdioajjj
Jjjaaa7&&3&& teacherteacher
Hajjaggzzzzzzzzxixixixi
tuuuuuuuuuuuweeeeeeouuuuiiiii iiiii ooo weeee
i i i o
Ai a i ai a i i i i o ia
yet yet
yetyetyetyetyetyet

4
Before I leave, I have a demand: a poem against extinction. It begins in bellies.It begins in endings. Underneath a plume of fascismo is another atmospheric condition — all pink, ascending pitch, hatching eggs of laughter. A blaze of new sunlight repairing an archive of unseen beams, knit together in mingled breath, here we come to we.

Infinite moon wandering ice ages, cellular oceans cusping margins, welcoming invasive species of underwater birds: each song an errant language, but understanding commences in silence.

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