Ezra Dan Feldman

SIGNAL, ENTENTE

Not only imperfect apples, love –

rotting so suitably

bruised and brown and warm –

Not only worn out boots, unfruitable

longings – how improbably got –

undernourished and unflowing I adore.

I want more. Graveyard kitchen, the half

moon a light fixture mouthing me off,

I stand before your nakedness: unfit or fit.

Then come gray jay. The Prosecutor

stalks by day; clouds like stones

on his shoulder grunder and threat. Escape

would be an awning of ailanthus.

But signed, unsigned, two kink-limbed

churchyard pines, we stretch

into a range of zeroes. Slender matches

from root to crest, our fireheads ripe

for igniting, now there is lightning.

IF

            if

these birches, self-similar hairs

spell out the sequence, same

as shafts of punctuating light

in the paperwhite sky:

            if

ink, o pen, long-armed

cross the lie of the land:

            if

ice covering the ego,

footprint, epitaph, melt:

not I was here;

I am.

FI

            fi

the next axe next

to my body,

my worms at their task:

            fi

unclaimed maggots

between generations

vibrate indistinguishably:

            fi

larvae, livid, anti-

alphabetic,

mirror-writ code:

not I; not any

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Psychic Meatloaf Poetry Journal