[without a listener]
a voice speaks to rheumy stars deadpan witness no call and response or supplicant's hope all this hurts the ocean suggests as if waves could privilege ear's dumb gestures or a ghost of a sentence learn to read its own dried ink
The slow crawling light wilts
into the dark flat of asphalt.
The moon rings the dim-lit room.
The scraping. The fire.
Dust
in the deep flesh of ear.
Strike a match, watch the flame—
the scraping, the fire, ring
in unison,
the brain’s bent
fugue.
Yoked mica, deafened glint—
scrape and fire, the moon ringing
the dim-lit room.
A louse in the crevice
of brain—
wrinkle-scape
in knuckles flexed
lashed, etched,
around the steel—
the affliction
of squalor—a pummeling
—skull
and brain
smelted in a starless dark.