in your first backyard
there will be a woman

with her arms outstretched
gripping stalks of sunflower

lightest breezes heavier
than all the weight at her center

one rooster out of three
struts with a bloody comb

he left his blood
and the blood of his brothers
on the peel of a young birch

a battered coathanger
holding a huge rose

the woman's picked him up
to stroke his bloody feathers

he has thirty hens to pleasure
here's a few verses before you collect the eggs

stories for you & the claws
on the rooster's thumbs

things born deep in fire
return to the furnace