Falling Bird

It’s nice to meet you pheasant, says
the pheasant, or he would if he
were not stone-dead with his
two feet tied together by a
string, which, out of shot, is
cut so the bird falls,
incrementally, the arrow of his
beak made literal, the cursive
ascender of his tail describing
his angle of approach towards
his fainter double, who rises in
a pool of water, or, to be exact,
on its meniscus, which is, as
yet, unbroken & has not
thrown itself in a ragged,
partial cone around the point
where the bird meets himself,
face first.

Don’t we look exactly like a pair of
pheasants? he might say, Doesn’t
our motley of blues & golds look
painted on with oils & shine so
beautifully against the dusky grapes,
the rough brown plaster of the wall?
There is a chance I love you.

Fidelity

Does it bother the apple
that these teeth now cutting
through its pale green flesh
were, not so long ago, pressed
into my earlobe with just
enough force to bring the blood
to the skin but no further?
Does the apple mind
that the lips on which its juice
is smeared still faintly taste
of my cum? Would
the apple be concerned
if I said it was not an apple,
but a quince, a plum,
an apricot, or a fiction;
if the mouth now grinding it
were not a mouth but
a space I’ve shaped to hold
the desire I’ve nowhere else
to put but here, right here?

Photograph © A. v. Z.