Cathedral of thorns, brambly fist—

how do the snakes get along such thoroughfares,

that deep, spiny mind with no thought

other than swallowing the world.

My arms are crosshatched with scratches

and purpled by juice, my back flayed

like a flagellant’s, but I’m not stopping.

The jars I filled with berries look bloody

in the distance—peck of bruised hearts,

glass vat of gizzard and lung,

easy picking at the thicket’s edge.

Now I know what the sparrow’s whisper,

those little breathy drums, damning and damning.

It’s a car, old and black. Some odd blink

of sun shone off a shard of glass

and drew me on. I went to the barn

for machete and shears, for heavy gloves and a hat,

and now this shadowy corridor, this hallway of hooks,

this ramp of knives onto soil unwalked

in years. It bleeds pure black under my boot.

Packard or Pierce-Arrow, high-classed and funereal

in its prime, yards off and under

the canopy of canes and berries

nectar-dulled to a plush, velvet sheen.

The light itself is stained glass, the grille darned

with threads of thorn, spoked wheels sewn

to the ground like buttons.

Outside, a raven caws to celebrate the sun,

and the cane that falls before me cries,

or I do, falling back in a fire of spines

at the skull in the driver’s window.