“Doghood is not the opposite of godhood.”
K. Ming Chang, Organ Meats
Half lunar, you and I, two strays circling
terrestrial avenues, hunting down a mirrored
heat. This town is doused in floodlights,
mere earthshine haloing the fields, blurring
out the stars. How could it witness our shimmer,
the spectacle of our bodies, spectral and rising
like vespers, shivering from so much want?
Up here, our griefs cannot eclipse us, escape
our furred tongues. We’ve learned the scent
of our mothers’ suffering, so we flicker, mercurial.
No longer immaterial: our feral, bulbous
hearts, dark meats glittering behind wreaths
of bone. Silver viscera in the blue corn hour.
We gristle our wombs, haggard our throats.