Gargled Zoology

My pregnant eyelids began to touch
the line of life. Kaylee, Kaylee, the birds
in Georgia love you. They sweep you up, your
fists full of berries and the iron ingots lining
the precious hollow of your mouth. Throw your
name to the textile warbler and it will become
silk. It will sparkle as if made of meat.
I’ll implore you to crush a dozen purple
berries with your otter’s paw.

The birds in Colorado would salute me. Yellow warblers
are sturdy as tanks; like Dürer’s rhinoceros, they heap
leaf upon leaf to bury anemic flaws. Like monkeys, they melt
the snow with their desperate breath. They never
had fingernails.

Are you eating the yellow fruit? Are you climbing, again,
the roasting mountain of doves? Am I suicidal, suicidal
in the crossroads, square in the sights of a rotting moon? No,
never. I am on the bank of the Potomac; I am dragging
colors through deep layers of the soil’s palimpsest.