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Chelsea Eckert

THE TROUT SINGING

While your mouth
   rounded into that
pinkish lozenge, I
   looked for the finger-
nail cuts on your
   neck, and I measured
your curious pull.
   Or tried. I tried.
I was not in love,
   am not now, just as
the moon does not
   love the Earth but
instead writes
   lovingly of it, in
the tugging of
   glass, in fierce
beach neutrality.
   Fluttering, those
words, your words,
   took on sounds that
conjured household
   pets from the pool-
side. No rainbows
   frowned across your
body, skimming
   scales — not one
bent streak. Just
   pinkish flesh, again,
for older predators.
   You owned the hook. I
like to imagine so.


ALLIGATOR MISSISSIPIENSIS

    paradoxically
long-legged    this wait:    no
    unsettling in the pool
underneath bruised thighs for
    show    this wait:      a flooded
space    a spearhead that wait:
    parting seas before men
in grassless times    the infra-
    sound bellow    the infra-
sound ardor     nothing so
    American     so man-made
than waiting for lovers
    to cluster      overcome


A BUS HITS A PHOENIX

Earlier, well, under the wheels, I
saw something like a red moon and
well-

   trodden by the city and dead, its
   eyes loud like applause, applause
   after a violin recital before which

you had not practiced. The
driver murmured thank you
and I and my folks shouldered

   the blame for the death of mythology.
   The bird — it had imperfect deltas for
   tail feathers or I suppose they looked

like long sad tongues. I
think I’ll come out today.


WHEN WE WERE SMALLER ANIMALS

Yes, sometimes we were a flock,
an isosceles of birds alighting

   on the silvered edges of road
   signs. Sometimes we forgot to

land with both feet and the
wires sent us barreling down

   like so much chalk dust, so
   ignoble, oh. Our feather-tips

there on the ground danced and
flexed iridescent and so did our

   mothers’, our fathers’ — that
   was all it took in those days

to become the heads of a riled
parliament with shiny eyes, like

   those of calves rushing forth
   to see the world beyond the cow.


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