From the Fishouse

In the Ogaden desert, they skim it from muddy water,

pour it over cactus meat: ululations crisp as morning birds.

*

With fossils they tune innards. With tails write.

Pause for good light. Let it pass through remains,

the Loudspeaker warbling in low tones.

*

In Oaxaca, they carve it of radishes. Contorted

shapes shaved into violins, slung into trees

cutting a thick, rained foliage sonata

for African bees. Some measures drizzling

the branches others hidden in the roots,

*

the pulse endlessly trilling

in the City of Angels, where it

resurfaces by the docks:

fifty varieties of night shade and sweet pearl,

fifty sacks of thistle grown entirely by pitch.

*

As the what if of the inflamed song

split the surface like a whale’s tail,

Argentines collected sun-bleached

cardboard in the storm of bells, knowing

hours by the heat of another’s body.

*

When we fix the trains will we hear it en masse,

the solipsistic question: why do they hate us? flaking

to an inarticulate texture,

dusty rafters quaking, until undone, hornlike

piece by piece we enter the Loudspeaker

addressed as stranger?

*

You are the last stranger,

little organ, little ear

all your lorries loaded with air.

When you feel me kiss you

during the overture of wild goats,

I’m caressing a rhythm.