Dear Reader

 After Dean Young

Northstars litter the Multiverse Each a homegone birdsong Tell of limbs & strings & thorns

Dear Satellite tell the drones I’m not too much to look at But Gretel said I’m handsome  

Peep the gap-toothed smile Plus I profile wild So says that series of 1s & 0s   

Dear Fourfooted beast bearing likeness to me Maybe I will be Dehorned & moved 

On the Blackest market as Urban Myth   Medicinal Status Symbol Aphrodisiac & Ephemera

Precious Ornament Luxury Tonic Conversation Piece My softest parts Exist still

Conservationists will tell you As root & remedy & omen My breath (a record) is caught 

On a loop Who do the birds belong to Dear Homespun cocoon Dear Lanternlit goathead 

You are Goldleaf & Murmuration A trashcan through Sal’s Famous A handwritten manifesto

Dear Children of the Terror Era Born every day How many words do you have for departure

Call each in exaltation An elegy on pirated software   recorded in a small room in Pittsburgh

Before we knew This season’s yield Language lives & dies On our tongues A cackle turns

The empire already washed in rot touched by light The punchline The art of misdirection  

A child plays on a toy piano To all the flames For you & I Still with awe

If Ibeyi

Drink from the river that carried us blessed left

us no wolves to suckle before building an empire remember

the soursop tree bruised fruit heals tend to ailing aunts call it

apprenticeship our duty an offering division of body fetch

water for rituals or commonplace butchering binary star split fin

every lizard you could not name but ran from kin we regenerate

what we are without Father a flame I am aftermath to inherit

a center so blue how could I not be ash (black) bodies who will

carry me further bring out all the missing in we never were

runaways certain we stand in the face of the blade & return

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