from second self in the valley of tongues

robyn art

[they were:

her flailing arms, a diminutive preacher praising the Lawd;

her body a stunned shell, nerves like unsprung traps;

her waking: red-faced, worm-like in her swaddler;

her waking: sand in her eyes, hand-over-fist up the ladder of broken sleep;

her tiny gums: toothless, pink, impossibly human;

her day hovering, then gone: sunset loosed behind the factory wall;

her yelping, puppy-like, in her sleep;

their feeding, their eyes stuttering closed in the window's scalloped light]