house

bee hum
they have overtaken the tree
and scrapped evergreen shavings
onto the baked comb
of earth.

the afternoon is
flat in a white heat
(poems out of anger are best sometimes)
broiled, (em)broiled,
charged with sharpness like flaked stone.

i pried the organs gently
out of a still-frozen chicken this afternoon;
ice slick film coating the skin,
soft chisel of fingernails secretly working.

i worried the pieces from the ribcage inside,
the red flesh flaked and banded like quartz.

i held the pieces in my closed fist until the pan was hot enough to throw them into.

the small heart looked
like a wax model of the thing:
tiny grey cord reaching up
aorta slight but unwavering,
waxy under the slough and slosh of floury water.

the bees didn't seem to mind the slick chicken smell that wafted around their hive tree (from inside).
even a tight white drum of a house has small leaks,
like fissures (slow) grown in rock.
air currents and stock smells find their way through,

air-balloon striates when blown too big,
white stretch-marks bloom in grey ground,
(slumped accordians wheezing).

our house is a pliant membrane of brick and wash:
in with filmed skin breath,
out in porous wet trade,
lung-dust and chalk coughed upwards from the sub-floor,
(secrets have gathered like fallen nail-clippings).

audible inhale under pinprick of stars,
fallen exhale like dusk descending on sharp hills.