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Soldiers collect & number: pigment, hair, jade, roasted meat, timber, cum. The enemy’s flute; the face of an enemy as he holds his young; the enemy’s face the moment it’s harmed. The woods are a class in what they can take. The country is fat. We eat from its side.
Copyright © 2018 by Nomi Stone. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 27, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
The egg is skinned in water, born before
the body. Salt as a nut, bare with blood,
the shallows pink with ache: be arable,
bear me towards the water, let me have
you. I freeze you: cell-throb & wake me
inside the afterlife. On that day, death did
come as a white ram. Egg, we slit its throat.
Nesting, the turtle seems to be crying even though she is simply secreting
her salt. Her dozens bud limbs inside amniotic pillows
as she leaves every egg in a cup of sand the size of her body,
shaped like a tilting teardrop — and both cryings
are mentioned by scientists. My niece Eve is startle-eyed when you feed her
avocado and when you feed her sweet potato. She lives mouth first:
Goats mewling
in the Muslim village.
Leafy footpath
into the bodiless acre
of graves. Pass.
Animals:
goats
chickens (a fury, a pack)
one pig (Salma)
Instructors measure our fervor.
Your machine must cover
the kill zone 100% Notate this fever Carry
the lure of the apple.
Where are you Salma? Little ache
of sky. Killing
Field inside, branches latched. Arbor, what is beyond
this wood?