Gillian Conoley

War 1

Infinity’s androgyny did it want a chance

this was the war for secrets    were women allowed     could anyone tell

horses wore gas masks, camels carried the infirm, mules

tried, elephants broke rubble with their trunks,  pigeons messaged,

cats ate rats, canaries died or chirped back (“Stubby” was the dog who could salute)

fly swarms at Gully Beach

my fathers were once happy men, boy-childs posing in their swim trunks

back-to-back, clasping hands, spitting river water up out of their mouths like a public fountain

with force through their teeth for more height

the water dripped melon flow down the chin

the maps they folded curled site, furled time

to try to take this power to the next power

I slept beneath the pelt

typed the report

I was a daughter willing to speak in anyone’s father lingo

Miscreants, brotherly cocks,

ghost-colored cocks grown ashy in the fields

The muscled legs, arms, strewn in the forest the jungle the beach

The disarray of death was in the dissolution of the uniform

I was the daughter I had no definitive location

Seeking honor in the crisp peaks of my nurse cap

I began to straighten in the corpse fields

I picked up escalation

I covered hallucination with dirt

I released Eden

Like the earth I had tidal loyalties

Wherever I walked the body parts, the pigment, the bending grasses,

I knew I was a speck in the cosmos in every hour’s dry complicated hair