Haruspex

I crouch on grass with wet denim knees,

smoke in my eyes and a cat-scratched throat,

hands cupping the air around a fallen form:

          brown and speckled white

          girl bird with entrails as tangled as yarn

          spilling from her center,

          feeding the spent earth beneath

This ancient practice: predicting the future

in another’s prone body is as familiar

as a lover’s sigh or a mother’s crooning song

Inside the house: a dripping faucet, a humming fridge,

the ceaselessly reproducing dishes,

and another day of anxious contemplation

I want to see anything but this inevitable march

           to stillness:

           the calendar stuck on a single immaterial square

When can we return, if not to our better selves

then to our diverted ones?

I call into the space

           where a heart once was

                     and hear my own lonely voice