Back home, my eye sockets sprout with birds.
They chirrup electricity and boneless
smoke. We wash the walls in several kinds
of petrol: high octane diesel for me; bricks and
cracked paint of pure unleaded. Something horned
twirls inside my mouth. I lie on my childhood bed
its tendriled spine clacking against mine—
conjoined twins, abalone thorax bones
teeth against teeth, chewing our morning
sisters. Only birdsong can survive
the waste inside us. Where my room is a pill to swallow
the floor is full of tongues. Something oval
breaks inside my mouth. Ossified rage, perhaps,
calciferous shell encasing aviary
amniotics. My tongue sits still at the desert of
a blue feather. On my childhood bed
I give birth to a kingfisher.
Stillborn—
she never draws a single breath. Before I catch her
she’s made a nest between my eyes
and all I see
is blue.