Fragments 9

If viewers are surprised at my skeleton

It is only because they have not read Kafka.

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Oh darling, you're not homesick, you don't have a home,

But I heard you singing when you were alone.

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There is a moment of anger, like the butcher noticing

a bruised carcass. Priestess, I wish I was a better sacrifice

for what you wish to burn towards, but this is all I am.

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I am always thinking of incursions to Africa,

perfect prose pieces placed like stories on a barge,

the way a moon is when it is carved from your smile

and not just its own memory, when it is the infection

that burdens arms before the machetes fall upon the blight-

and I know that Conrad got it right.

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Everyone has just one heart, beat,

I think of grinding It beneath my heel