Bright alley-oop, the nightingale’s munificent cry
would later be remembered as song,
but for now
settles in the back of the throat like a cough.
Is not any haunt or prophecy this burden, as it passes
from one station to the next? Is not sex the matt or gloss
that decides purchase?
It provokes the mind to a sort of culpability
hitherto unaware of—these sheaves of music,
this predilection to name. When we arrived
we were invited to invent one another in various forms.
Me, the lyre. You, the head absent its body.
--Joshua Kryah, 2004