Ornithology

all yawn the mouth and puffed with berries
with the cloud spout shuffling
and the mouth has kissed and burnt itself slight with white steam
left a linger to be puffed
and the taste of red-clay

Remember all kinds of birds stacked in bookshelves and
crammed down alleyways and the feathers are all berry-hued
or plain white in coats and always pushing through

cataloging sheets of beaks and chirps stuck on pages or pulled
to other countries than their own, cataloging currents of remiges, and rectrices, and coverts
and all too streamlined to be held but by the wind

and fingers coax, stutter, and pluck, reddining
note by note and the puffed yawn, mouthed round berries
bobbled and jostled. Dropped tones spun in octaves smelling of the sear
of mouth flesh and it hurts to not know how, just yet, to remember
cracked stalactites and ice of the body crafted over amphetamine momentum