From euphoria at the blossom's destruction * in time-lapse, save us. We quicken & hiss like serpents, * our tongues flick us forward. We are studies of peritonitis * at the U.S. Forensic Death Farm in Tennessee. From the stunned * half-smiles of the decomposed, we rise. A dwarf inflates * to a giant, bloated like a Macy's float. The corpse * is arranged in Holding Area 232a: the effects * of assault rifle fire have been digitally photographed * for the muse to download for this page, an aggregate of signs * that I have fashioned with her aid. Tell me * to what end, o master. Without you words are pure convention. * Show me where the soul clings on, the Ineffable Name. * The language of the old belief, has it perished? * Keystroke, rictus, click, contusion: the apparitions gather like breath.
From World Tree by David Wojahn. Copyright © 2012 by David Wojahn. Published by University of Pittsburgh Press. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.