Abbr. Bestiary
Ripped page
docks tail, crops
ear into a new
morality, wild

and bewildering
as the first,
lacuna’s lecture

in extremities’
extremis, object’s

altered lesson,

as if less were
best in show,

leaves brittled
and unbound,
ex-codex wrecked

irreversibly, thus
resurrected into
parchment’s
favorite parable.

Adam rendered
hemless hovers
above former feet,
element-defeated,

amputated into
the blank space past
where the image

ends, in which
the now-invisible

animals lay waiting

for the curse or
blessing of a name.

New math
says this torn
pard—real leopard’s

imaginary half—
is now a quarter
creature and freer
for it, says lines

of horse permute
to lines of shore,
a jagged absence.
To those who’d

want to hide in
hide or hold tail’s
tale, I say let go

and look below.
A see-through

sea’s bright side

laps at a world of
virtues and of vices

unmoored bodiless,
no herd or flock to
cower or to crow,

murder excised
and pride elided.
That roar you hear
is just eternity.
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