once again, the animals burrow

A poem based on Edvard Munch’s The Scream

Last night they painted words all over

the trees; in the morning,

they remained. In the dark, they glowed.

The sky has opened with the

holy intention of swallowing us all:

from the bird’s mouth, she crows,

believer, believers, believed.

A planet cannot fit into another.

A light cannot absorb more light.

The man beds his wife; the neighbor

cooks something sweet; the squirrel

scurries atop a live-wire; the doctor

dissects a mother’s stillbirth; you sit

still on your sofa and stare up

into blackness peppered with more blackness.

Your brush strokes the beginnings

of the end, a little red mixed with

orange and brown.

Fire everywhere— the animals have

begun to burrow under the soil.

The grandfather’s thumbs are

once again wrinkled with spit.