The Screaming Sheep

slow sweating onions in a pan

she said your jawbone is a saltlick

                                                       did she say

hand-over-the-cash-and-no-one-gets-hurt?

 

maintain your focus / pray for your mother

language, go the way of palm-wine drinkers

who believe the remedies are the remedies

they have always been:

 

Swimmer’s block: half vinegar, half water

Pink eye: massage the bridge of the nose

Arthritis: Apricots, almonds, whisky from a mug

Ear infection: chew your bodyweight in bubblegum

Everything else: ground the rind of tangerines

               in a pestle with cherry bark, add tobacco

               and vinegar, drink until you fall

 

beginning with a definition

is never a good idea                paradise warbler

            traipsing through the herb garden

 

dog stops on whistle, whistle hangs dog

     owner / what you think you know but don’t

can hurt you / chrome plated fire

     breathing dragon / flask of scotch

on the museum floor / in the abandoned theater

where someone got shot, the one absorbed by

shadow is never who you think

 

if you’ve made it this far I can tell you

that she never really loved him so much

as she was afraid for her life

without him – inside a single remedy

there is the capacity to freeze

bullets entering the breast of a paradise warbler

 

she was born into the moment

of light touching everything it didn’t want to burn

             tongue like flame

beginning with definition is the death of any bird