The Drum Thing

When you listen to hear

they say

what did you see?

I saw

Egypt smothered.

She died, that entire place

stiffly in the old manner.

Drums.

In the morning stumbles her ghost

the skin off the muscles

and in moving has the skull and horns of a deer.

From the suburbs

out of an old Ford

others come with her, animal shapes in walking.

A fly-covered horse hangs from

a tree in the sun, heaved

there from a swing chain, its belly ripped out, wind now.

The grey tongue of the horse has only flies.