And then, the clawed feet of something
akin to speech crawling across the half-moon
of my lip. I, red-beetled and buzzed, come
crawling into bed tonight looking for the last
light of this evening’s rage in your hair. God,
how long the night trapped in the bottom
of a bottle thrown into a sewer or lodged
in a man’s dark hand? I am still holding the bird
I wrestled from the streetlamp of your anger.
It is pecking at my palm. I cover its mouth
and the avalanche in its throat when I come
into the house so as not to wake you.
The fountain, in the square, is still broken.
It leaks like a man. I’ve said this before: I come
as the children came before the closed door
of Noah’s ark: to plead for water. To beg you stay.
from King MeFind it in the library
Copyright © 2013 Roger Reeves
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.