A jackal and a crow. Blood neither shed nor shared
between them. The dynamite, nearby, is armed.
They are barely contours, prepared
to escape the kernel of blackness and assume a rudimentary form.

Above them, thought balloons are floating. The cartoon repaginates
the seashore, windy, dry as bone.
When the rain falls, it becomes clear the photographer, buried to his waist,
was welded of bronze and focused on no one.

Converging, they vanish, one in front of the other—
the bear and the fish—
circling
patiently.
In belts of barnacles
souls.
Each one
shifts his weight from foot to foot
squints
as if having lost
a contact.

Perched on one foot, latching a sandal.
First I see an olive tree—and then the magnetic tree.
Orbits of objects, carefully balanced.
Flick the pupil and, as if by prayer, a lizard is vanquished.

Halfway into the journey – just puncture me with a compass.
Zero-kilometer, where fabled rivers converge, reversing polarity: drain.
Suppose it a tunnel, at once the air is set tight as a lattice.
Hurray! You are launched from the maw of a soil-based yawn.

Hangnail, dangled all the way down to the switchflow entrails,
there to consult the register: vapors, extralarge rock, and the coiled bands.
You unfasten your jaw at the plywood façade like a conscript,
oil, the armed, double-barreled ram turns the corner: en garde!