BELL

O chord in the throat of the calyx. O corrugated

rain-sound shack. Cracked reliquary.

From the mouth’s void and struck tongue

the shard of your voice gathers its octaves:

in pocked lanes of Texas scrub

in shuttered houses and gutted halls

in the empty belly of a brown girl

in ghost town, cocoon husk, cupstone

in the stop-drilled crack running black as a mapped river

through the imperfect metal of your founding.

From your long-silenced hum, your quint,

your naming note soft as skin, new-shed

from the yoke, the shoulder, the waist,

the cannon, the rope, from your spidered

shell, your body’s glint.

Published in Spillway, 2019

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