Hailey Leithauser

I was, I was—by its posthumous chomp, by its bad dab of venom, its joy-buzzer buzz. If you’re ever shanked like the chump that I was, by the posthumous chomp of an expired wire, you’ll bellow out prompt at the pitiless shiv when she does what she does. Was

I don’t have to outrun the elephant, I just have to outrun you. I don’t have to race with a belligerent ten-point buck, outpace an elephant in musth. I don’t need to flee a wrathful firmament or dance with a choleric jackboot. I don’t have to outrun the elephant. I only have to outrun you.

O , she says (because she loves to say O ),

No other song or swoop (part quiver, part swivel and plash) with tour de force stray the course note liquefactions (its new, bawdy air an aria hangs in) en- thralls, trills, loops, soars, startles, out-warbles, out-brawns, more juicily, lifts up the dawn, outlaws from sackcloth, the cool sloth of bed sheets, from pillows and silks and blue-quilted, feminine bolsters, fusses of coverlets; nips as the switch of a juvenile willow, fuzz of a nettle, to window and window and window and ever toward egress, to flurry, pollen and petal shed, to wet street and wet pavement, all sentiment intemperate, all sentience ephemeral.

Less a nip than gnaw, the way a goat, tethered, will ruminate a rope; the way each

The heat so peaked tonight the moon can’t cool a scum-mucked swimming pool, or breeze emerge to lift the frowsy ruff of owls too hot to hoot, (the mouse and brown barn rat astute enough to know to drop and dash) while on the bunched up, corkscrewed sheets of cots and slumped brass beds, the fitful twist and kink and plead to dream a dream of air as bitter cruel as winter gale that scrapes and blows and gusts the grate to luff the whitened ashes from the coal.

Such green, such green, this apple-, pea- and celadon, this emerald and pine and lime unsheathed to make a miser weep, to make his puny bunions shrink; these seas and seas of peony, these showy tons of rose to urge a musted monk disrobe, an eremitic nun unfold; such breathy, breathy moth and wasp, such gleeful, greedy bee to bid the bully hearts of cops and bosses sob, to tell a stubby root unstub, a rusted hinge unrust, the slug unsalt; to stir the fusted lungs to brim, the skin to sting, the dormant, tinning tongue to singe and hymn.

Midnight’s merely blue, but me, me, me, I’m through and through sloe, cracked soot- on-a-boot, nicotine spat, licorice whip. You can scratch, scratch, scratch but I stay underskin true to ebony, ink, crowberry, pitch; hoist me up by my hooves and shake till I’m shook, I’m still chock full of coke, fuliginous murk. O there’s swart in my soul, coal by the bag, cinders and slag, scoriac grit, so please come, comb through my fleece with hands pallid as snow and watch how they grow tarry, raven, stygian, ashed— or, if you wish, clean me with bleach I won’t flinch, just char down to a core of caliginous marrow, pure carbon, atramentous, utterly piceous, shadowed, and starless, each clumpity clump and eclipse of my heart raptly re-burnishing a woolgather dark.

The heart of a bear is a cloud-shuttered mountain. The heart of a mountain’s a kiln. The white heart of a moth has nineteen white chambers. The heart of a swan is a swan. The heart of a wasp is a prick of plush. The heart of a skunk is a mink. The heart of an owl is part blood and part chalice. The fey mouse heart rides a dawdy dust-cart. The heart of a kestrel hides a house wren at nest. The heart of lark is a czar. The heart of a scorpion is swidden and spark. The heart of a shark is a gear. Listen and tell, thrums the grave heart of humans. Listen well love, for it’s pitch dark down here.

A lot more of than thought, unsought, come out white. Lemurs of Madagascar, and leopards sans spots. Brilliant, I think, to spurn pigment and burn in December light, a December filament. No one would know if there’s snow in your hair, or whether or not, when they knock, you are there.