REND

Hands trembling, they wash their bodies

with lamplight to show what night

can call them to. Each other, mostly, drawing

shadows on the wall: shark tooth

divining the tide, an egg hiding the last shard

of moon inside albumen. The eagle

they make transforms into hydra, into

cypress dropping then bringing up again its leaves.

A story lives on in the mind: a contest,

the king and his servant combat, a need for both

to become the other, the crown never the object.

Their contortion a rose bruised on every petal, wrecked

out of itself for symbol, for its velvet deftly ground,

from which the shade of resist, don’t can be found.