Sky Burial

After Lucille Clifton Vulture, follow me up: here is the arm my mother held me aloft with (as well as she could, until she couldn’t), it is cut free of her body now, pulled away from her shoulder, away from her breath, as you, Vulture, point your wing toward her offered heart, toward me — let’s pound her fingers into paste, pound the hand open, come down, I chant, each word opens the sky, the clouds need to be warned — once she was hand & now she is wing, once she was dirt & now she is air, she was food & now she is bird, she was lifted & now she is gone.