Читать книгу Fancy Beasts - Alex Lemon - Страница 13

it had only been dead a few hours

What a strange paradise this is—

languid apricot trees & birds

of paradise. Tire-flattened

oranges in the alley & ants

in the hummingbird feeders.

Neighbors peek from the blinds

when the sprinklers torque on

& I cannot romanticize this

ultimate torture test. You say

your foot is killing you?—well,

hot damn, you are dead

nuts, right on. That is the essence

of all of this, isn’t it? So let me tell you—

they begin as piles of bones,

the animals in my dreams do.

Each night, they clink & clonk

& rise like a time-lapse video

of skyscraper construction.

One animal turns into a man

& the man gives birth

to a dead dog. In just seconds

the other animals have rent them apart

& then, I’m awake. Night swallows

knife through the morning

fog as I stand at the window

listening to the coyote song.

My entire body is killing me,

& I have witnessed my own death

& lived—I whisper my wagers

against disaster into the dark air.