Gray

The sky is a sheet of corrugated zinc

I watch the horse’s tongue become a dagger

We call this state Guernica

It is a noun for the sound of bone

Splitting beneath a heavy, indifferent sun

A woman carries her child like a broken jar

The geometry of her neck is a jagged theorem

Here, we perform the ritual of Verdun

Not the mud, not the trenches

But the moment the lungs forget how to expand

It is a name for a vacuum

That has not yet been named by the living

The bull stands in the corner of the eye

Stolid

Granite

He is the Moloch of the morning bread

A tragedy without a spectator

He represents the weight of leaden hours

The specific gravity of a scream

That travels inward toward the marrow

Every finger is a splinter of white ash

We are breathing in the dust of our ancestors

This is the Golgotha of the kitchen table

The canvas is tearing

The meat is cold

There is nothing left to translate

The lightbulb flickers and dies

A final, sharp crack of a violin string

Absolute

Silence