States May Sing Their Songs of Praise

I imagine each enunciation, each syllable pronounced—Mississippi—makes a noose cinch somewhere, rope reduced to arousal, tightening. The pull, the hard-learned feel of vertebrae supple within a neck's column, and marrow's juice sucked clean until what remains are flutes of bone, a wind section of rubble. Whenever I meet Mississippi in a dream, it is always a landfill of labored breaths or a grand mammal crippled in morass. What did you ever want of us? I ask. It beams, The same you want for me—the subtle heft of razors beneath the magnolia tongue's lash.