(I)  In the Wild

A passive brightness scores its initials on the thatched ceiling,
as the sun plasticize our shadows on a wall frame.
the smeared patches of light, whitewashed
for our voice to regift colors.

& sound is made flesh. & the luster worms into both language
& leash, unsettling—as the raw weave of leather over our napes.

all noon, with each black minute, our pronouns awash,
toweled in wild greenery: this bestiality of crying wolf.
the cherub of man-eaters, equally yoked with a long line of male.

I felt a claw peel me till I bleed,
& my skin sates its hunger.
how we identify at lights-out:
a scar for a scar, in this cutthroat blindness.

say, grief stains the bone.
say, a neighing hoofs at our doorstep.
there’s just we here, back bent.
all fur, cold-blooded & groomed to make tent-piece off a haystack.
there’s just this labium, screaming its own hollowed tongue.

(II) The Last Filly

On grazing. the teff leaves braided back to near-perfection.
you—arching to light. & I palm you as if nothing, dusting
the shiny cow piss off your neck. we pedal our feet in
tandem with the muddy waters,

with the chased spattering of minutes: a burden life affords us
& the soiled labor of our precious limbs.
in between this wildness, blood strengthens your teeth.
& we munch: carving out glyphs from the roughage,

& making runes off the haylage—strawed to a bunch
in the early hours of starvation. we buy into the hunger.
when I itch my tit for milk, I arrive at white grace:
something sour as a chorus to leave between the gum.

when the wild was tamed & you went soft,
I never felt to mourn you. never felt the blind onslaught
heralding our passing away.
your brawn, sheeted beneath the cruel auspice of light.

I sought you everywhere a brightness
shone, memorizing each bend/ each turn/
each approached surface.

 

(Editors’ Note: “In the Wild” is read by Matt Peters on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 52A.) 

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