21 February 2010 | Vol. 9, No. 4

Milk or Whelk

by BRENNEN WYSONG

Who are you? Tinkerer or whistler? Whisperer or pickpocketer? Specter or wren? If a riddle, then answer in static trapped in antennas or flash powder dissuading children away from the dark. If not, when weather registers music in our bones, then answer with glass antlers shattering or stars carved of paraffin. Once, I dreamed of paper targets of a prey rare or fleet enough to make me turn away the gun. Then in my turning, I saw grease fires rouse and roust a prowler from a roadside ditch littered with flashbulbs. A million phantom limbs swim in a river in search of their turgid bodies drowned within it. A larder filled with vermillion birds burns. Or, it doesn't. Or, it does, and the birds release singing from the ashes, answering with black notes repeating.