LUMINOUS, WHATEVER HONEY

I go to twist the knob of a burning skull

that burns because the canyon sun has touched

curve after curve of the hard, soiled thing

into luminosity, as though veins ran courses

around the buffered ivory of socket and tooth,

rounded where thinking broke loose.

Coyote skull? Fox skull? I’m too ignorant

to know. The elaborate bone’s circled by opulence:

cactus blossoms, a beetle’s green carapace. My thumb

falls into where sight’s gone hollow. My fingers

fondle the spinal gap for whatever sap’s

left over in the desiccated jaw. Whatever honey

was eaten has calcified, as though hunger has frozen

under skin, over thought, in the tremble of my hand.