O-Graft

Operating as a gesture for containment:
            tongue and serpentine, exceptionally placed.
      I opened up my home. The article, a dash instead
                  of O—	          A girl was shot uphill. Her gesturing

My light. That much I knew of operational 
            intelligence, the centralizing articles for love.
      You walked into my home. You drank up all my water
                  and two months over the spout. I ran out of my home,

This human zone, for reason. Meanwhile
            someone hunted someone else, and someone
      called that archival, the combing of my hair with saffron 
                  gesturing endurance, for my name you wrote in petrol

Vietnamese: Detritus, O—	       Divine.
            I witnessed sentences by breath, and you
      had cried out, Sister, O—	           We did not want this.
                  That was known: this quadrangle of nouns, a graft

Over my skin made lighter than the color.
            Over that, a mouth; and under that, a human 
      heart with antlers.

Read more from Issue 18.2.