See, how she tucked her tiny spectacle,
A songbird, behind the chimney bricks
And sealed it shut inside her frayed blue purse,
Some silk grief ago
Against the indigo of company.
She wrapped his lemon-feathered form
In soft strips of newspaper wetted down
With powdered milk, gentle not to bend a wing
Or break a brittle claw. Her mummery.
In the Dumas Brothel Museum,
In your glass case now, canary, in your
Tin can purged of all its minerals,
You are beautiful, grotesque. I am in this
Freight and keep myself.
I write home from Butte in mercury.
I take it back from you. I am on my one.