This is not a good year for bats: bats need heat
To multiply, and all these bird-bats need windows
Through which to fly. You and I
And that hummingbird body, blasted
Against the glass. Together we weigh
A coin’s weight in a leather
Change-purse. Bird-bats find
Windows late. They stand

Witness to the blade-
Washing rain; children find them laid-out,
Moistened, like candy on the ground. Parents
Find the soak of love
Letters in a mailbox. Bats find
Heat and echoes and I
Find a uvula back in

Your throat. Into your mouth my sticky
Tongue; the wheels
Get wet. Our drying clothes hide
The overturned chair, the walls hide behind
Careless brochures: Hepatitis, HIV,
Dim hours. The blinds are
Down, but through the window I
Find a stranger lurking in my closet, tussling
The belts that would touch
Me naked. The dog

Foaming in the yard. I vacuum
Up the dirt you track
Around and I cover your vulgar foot-
Prints that you stomp songs with. In the rhythm
Of light moistening your body, I

Forswear; your children find
Ruby-throat birds, upside-down
In thickets of rain. Fig,
Bitter apple, staining grape: pop-licks,
Popped locks that you and I found
In the soil. After this sleep I’ll feel

Fresh as an eel, fortunate
As any cyclone. I’ll miss
Your family’s shuttered house
And go roaring into the wheat fields, go spin oblivion
In the crops—
Abandon my spoils, and such.