Robbers
'Inside every heart
slumps the same
silk-fleshed fig
bitten in the first
lost garden. First
relinquishing skin.
Our paradox: carrion
that carries on,
tomb that mushrooms
to coax its stone
aside, and inside
gauze, deflated,
suggests the grave
we deserve yet
can never reenter.
Our central distortion.
Our sweet-weakened
teeth, long toiling
in fields, our orphaned
forever—tended then
bereft of fruit. A blush
inflames the slack-winged
birds, our half-mast
tails slapping the base
of our spines in migrant
flight. Our compass
slagging south. Sour
glint of bile. The pinch
of gilt-belated reflex—
diapered by our appetites.'
Congenital
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