A wire-mesh tray sifting small from large, crumbled seed from shell, feeling from faces that remain, eyes closed, mouths’ unfinished sent- ences. The once had and lost, a sister’s photo, blown leaves that should not be at your feet. A brother dying on a city street, friend trying to lift him, a memory caught and fibrous at the edge of the tray, where breath ends, where the slight scraping of time is a fingernail drawn across wire screens—this permeable thing in your hands that you shake from side to side, roseate dust falling. You wake to chickadees. Perpetual haste. The six crows peering in your window.
John Allman | Cinnamon Angel Wings at Signe’s Heaven-Bound Bakery Contents | Mudlark No. 48 (2012)