Читать книгу Alphabet Year - Devon Miller-Duggan - Страница 12

November courts martyrs—birds die, women exhaust themselves.

Xylology: The study of wood, not trees. Study of corpses, not being

torn from corpses. Hagiography: Writing the corpse.

March & May—the only month-names meaning something more. Well, August.

Grating, grunting, each day does both.

Zephyr my heart, three-weathered day, keep

January—the old year’s corpse lingers,

elements disbursing into crystals, into “ask

wooden-heart, the puppeteer, ask what to make.”

Can I leave? The house’s layers of air

keep thinning. The closer layers

have their own hands.

September resurrects the year, which leaves its tomb, a

bundle of fetid rags and empty pages.

December binds the pages.

October’s had breath to write. It will all

revisit the place where the grave re-opened, no

love safe, no longer named.

Yes, someone can leave, something’s

unbound, something of

value, like a pebble on a headstone, not exactly gem, not

quite growth, not quite quiet.

August’s the witch-furnace—stirring the huge pot

in the fire the air keeps feeding.

February brings nothing to the table.

Put each in its own booth to wait.

Xylology (noun), the study of wood.