I want to talk about the body 

& how it persists

 

His mouth a wound that won't heal spreads 

across the nation a kind of infection

 

BREAKING NEWS

 

The day too bright to bear witness 

My neck craned toward sky

 

What taxonomy of grief includes 

this? That brown flutter between dead 

branches sparrow? Maybe 

he says some part of me listening 

despite myself

Hands in pockets to hide their tremor the way 

history lodges itself in joints makes them ache

When they say America I think instead 

of wind in my hair harsh

 

BREAKING NEWS

 

Horizon a medical term for the distance 

between what we know & what kills us

I try to believe in the sparrow's song a small 

testament to continuing

 

BREAKING NEWS

 

This body of evidence against me 

this body of water drowning

 

This existence a bruise darkening 

for so long but what color 

 

will we become tomorrow? when the wound 

finally opens?

 

Look— there in the tree the sparrow's chest 

expanding deflating

 

Like lungs giving their final breath 

Eyes black vessels holding nothing closed

 

Its beak barely open the way my grandfather's was 

after they removed the tube

 

It is a song sparrow I record in my notebook 

the way doctors record symptoms

 

BREAKING NEWS

 

What song is left when the throat 

has been cut?

 

BREAKING NEWS

BREAKING NEWS

BREAKING

BREAKING 

BREAK—