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Said she to we:
“
I’d been to Africa
you see,
’twere
upon a dare
’twere
the death of me
”
.
In the concert hall
Brown-haired Sayre let slip her hair, it
Fell fever-dreamed
Over us all
A pall
A smoke
A virus
A kerosene
A nerve
While
Airless she screamed
And the band played on
.
We three watched fall
her lips
her eyes
her hips
her thighs
.
She let fly
Her arid spirit to a malarial sky
.
Revisits Sayre
Her travels
Her treks
Through spirit-lands of
Bus
Train
Ship
Wrecks
“
Thus have I a dog of white, and
my merry band
to bury my blight
‘neath bog-scabs
o’er a smoking land.
stand back,
my decline further,
at-hand
“
She sang of Dengué fever
Barely-survived
Tended in hovels of mud:
“
I lay in my own dreck
”
with the blood
of chicken,
snapped
of goat,
slit
both by the neck
Sang the whippoorwill
“
Resume your trek
thy dare not done
“
Before the turning,
We watched her dance
Sang she:
“
With my joy,
with my glory
I shall tell thee a skyward story
“
Til fell
(like brown her hair)
Upon her scabs of rust, that
Cackle at the crow, the scare
Her,Tin-Man, at the seize
What we thought endless
Joy’s betrayal come salty to dust
Her report read:
“
‘Twere impossible
merely
the despair to wheeze
“
Return as random the wind
The fever
The tongue of leech
The fingernail of spider
Ants join in the endless river of care
She sang one to each
Until, like hair,
Fell silent she
.
Dried to papier-mâché, her
Recently eclipsed, redolent sun
Blew away like a scab
The leper-rot of her mind come undone
.
‘Twas good we fortunate saw her once
Her arising break-of-day like any lark
Before the empty-seated encore
Her come to a slow-walking stop
Still, stock-still
Like the cicada skin stuck to the leprous bark.
.
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