The hedgehog extracts the root of the sky – a dark prophet
shouldering the full weight of Sebastian’s body.

The hedgehog has trickled out of a sieve – its back is
at odds with itself, so meticulously plural.

Maybe you do draw
                seriously,
but not now, alas! Lines
form a grill,
and behind it—lions.

Lions. Their life is a diplomat’s,
they pose on their paws, their heads double.
With celerity of computer chess,
lions occupy cells with each cell.

Who led me across the city that morning?
Behind the railway station, he sat me down at a low
wooden table and produced a bottle. We cracked it like a watermelon.
My Adam's apple bobbing, as though I and the rails had shared the swallow.

On the fence was a pumpkin. I used to think the elixir of debility
was in the potato. But no! It's in the pumpkin,
an octave below. From the instability
of its inner glow, fingers of pulp emerge as if counting.

since morning the street was lined with
glass towers chiming like salami
dangled from vacuum

from any vantage transpicuous
intersections of buzz and breeze
          (nerves) as
if all’s about these: contacts and contracts
ring and if anything sting