Uncommon Ancestor

I am wearing heavy feathers with the gaze of the day lit to my backside. A rotisserie routine, hot with punishment and prayer. Prayer for punishment, punishment for prayer. Answers from a sky beaded in blue birds, upon gods’ supposed pretty blue fabric. Crowned crows and drowned geese barking their bird songs— like god’s dog, a dog’s god. Feedback fed back to my waterproof back. Backed by waterproofed ears. No water, no proof. Not even of the air. Myself, essential as an appendix, wise as a wisdom tooth. A modern sticky taste of evolutionary distaste. An undriven itch paraded down a forked road. Forked, ed; I ask silver why, silver when? All it knows is where, the non-knowing of a mouth. Only a stabbed, spoonfed reflection, down a downed throat. Only, gagged. Only, only, only. One and only, twice and only, third and only. Words like a broken car, braking on my tired back. Treaded wrong, treaded right in the in-between spot. Stubborn and beige as the day. Shining with the sheen of a hydrophobe, a homophone, a synonym. Silver seal skin, sealed in, sealed out. Worn—all worn—over unmatched elbows dripping dropped drops. Pointed pens drawing the ink down from my cupped jaw. Southern drawn tears written on a northern face. Tearing torn words on the papered table, cornered into torn corners, soiling the bread on the table. The bacon, this belly fat. Migrations rations. A seasoning. Sprinting, flying flavors chased to the next season. Only less of a lesson when school’s out, only school’s never leave school. Schools make students, and fish, and pheasants, and flies, and men. Always an agent, always a pharaoh. Concealing the pyramids, stealing cerulean. Never claimed, never claimed to claim. But claimed clams and bitten birds, spun on a spit and spat on; We all are— all we are.