Abigail Chabitnoy

having cleared those we were given

cut the sky from our feet.

We knew how to swim once.

Must every daily siting become ordinary?

the deer, the elk, the canary, the fox—

these days I am only stopped by predators

along the highway, on power lines and in fields

for selling.

Maybe there were three of us. Maybe

there were three hundred. They told us

we needed seeding.

I have a slip of sand from a

home I don’t carry when I travel:

this too will be taken. this too buried. Take

instead the smooth white stone that could be axe

or back scavenged from the guarded

beach

maybe a tooth—always a tooth

(I am writing them into the surface

like a skin, because)

the truth is the stone I carry

is too soft and shiftless. There were more

in the water there were others but

I shied from the weight—enough

to bring small wings down

the body a risk soft

under pressure.

I’m trying to tell you

a red sky is a sign

you know instinctively.

Still we believe in mountains

insist on their promise

(in every falling story we survive

the higher ground).

Still we dig up teeth.

Still we plant the seed

insist we will grow.

in the island

in the earth

wherein my kin

dwell well with holes

fox and gaping:

Present mortars ringing window

shards and red salt

pocked brick working the emptied

block.

Siege the day.

Sometimes the cards are warning,

the crows not what they seem, and naturally

the ravens, the brass eagles

young enough to be golden.

From feels like this

this molting

this body stone slipping

silk string from string and

sinking

but for the water

pulling from these shores.

Line bolt after body after beam on the beach

and count the dead.

In the records, in the time that comes

of flooding, turn

the body garment, hung

and carried to light

in the haustellum of the eclipse.

Dust collects, catches

to wet sand through small fingers

slipping. Cut

from the boat.

Child, my ark, would you believe me:

The point is how I love?