::06:06:08::

::: Salute to Burning :::

When sirens part the gasoline trees
Salute to burning

Be selfish with your breath & thirst
For pigeon-like companionship

Observing silent the secret
weapons holstered by our nametag-disease.
Hello motherhood & detention.
How are you crystal man & married eyes?

Your igloo box and plastic spork bags will be lonely someday
no volunteer to rescue you. No regret is patterned
fabric and other keys defy our skeletal ways.

It’s the symmetry of this monetary scale and street Dobroe utro Otkuda tys that light and utter the gum mosaic pink and green unbreakable dead cattle feet and sequin eyelashes all elements of a proper burial

Where contentment in placid stone and sand bottom ebbed by storm and soot.
Ripple asymmetrical
catch and release the exoskeletal film
on a lake the patina of our charge and circuitry
we concur our desire to fly finally, but shun the sacrifice
of wind and tail obsessing a skin we can’t quilt together
our stitch is magnetic
unlink and recollect what we spread on our photograph rooms
what we store in our castle buckets and light tables
when we all inhibit
shadows

Who can be as mangled on a park bench or a building ledge—
constructions of sandstone stacked in time
compress the stillness of pre-elementary sight.

Why we fight and chew our words
Expel & askew
Fall apart ceiling and open the floor
we should make a brick house while fastening the cellar doors the shingles the slats the foliage of owls feathering the A-frame
no wing and no chimney can balance this view

What I conclude about your edges is nothing new
only I coax old by living it through
no need for the surface gifts reflected off prescriptive lenses
return all that is given to a thirsty pigeon.

Written by: ~ Lia Yaranon Hall