$ Poetry Is Currency

(i.)If what you want’s a vulgarityof gore, I’ll give you my open-heart (ii.)surgery. Ribs fractured, a snow-on-crimson scarlet ibis wing-drying (iii.)in the insatiable sun of the medical lamp. (iv.)What is and isn’tfor sale: red-breasted (v.)organs and portraits, whatever I doyou’re going to take it — (vi.)everything — away from mebefore the five-note chime even strikes…

A line of wet black birds on the powerwire, coal drops, hunkerelbow to elbow. I will gun it for the open drawbridge. Thereis a casket I needto go dancing on. Hellbent in a red-earth rustyBenz. Mesquite trees crouch, thickas the skritch of a wire brush. My Greek Chorus, hoarse as wet gravelin a perpetual drought.…