by Mark Flynn.
The collocation of a head within its hat
or a brain within its box is not enough to coin
a compoundword worthy of the phrase.
Spasm born of nerve, chicken born of effect
thought hatched from synapse – these mutations
fashion the language of the gutter and the altar.
Night’s fabric casts its dust across the sky
the sponge of a moth’s wing, cut from cloth,
the weave in the weft, one word too many,
or not. The desire and demise,
the word and silence
in the boxed brain.