Carbonized Forest

The eye that was open on Friday.

The portent and the portent’s flensed hide. Ribbons of flesh

swarming downward. Like a school of leeches

deserting some unlit cataclysm.

And a briary phantom there, Stygian, erect.

Saying, here is the untranslation of the world.

Mounted on a spire of form.

The disembarkation of abyss. Fragmentary sputtering.

And what you thought were dark whiptails of illumination

were bristles from a shaved bear

being milked for bile in a rusting cage. Nested

among the mesh of soft translucent sounds

fallen from your lips, the

vestiges of someone’s breathing.