CATFISH HEADS ON A CLOTHESLINE

Whoever cut them from their spines
      was a preacher, I’ll bet—or else
wanted to show off each shearing
     of maw from body flawlessly:
all these glistening ampersands

     of grief, loose string of e’s
found in et cetera, three repeated
     vowels pinned up to complicate
flesh—my obsession with it.
     In the breeze’s twisting

of each wan, whiskered head:
     obscene, dangling wind chimes.
& the calm after it? Slime glint,
     sonic nothing. I’m the shrunken dead
like them, here—witch-brew hoodoo

     —my skin wrinkled, greening
the sky’s bluer potion. Sacrifice me
     to whichever gods you think left
this catch as evidence of End Times
     approaching. My oblivion

comes as catfish possession—
     fulfilling the cycle between
night & day, brain & gut, citizen
     -ship & city. Every night
I become one. We rise from this

     clothesline again. Floating
back to the bank of the river
   together, we dream of bodies
though we never find them.
     If the spirit does anything

just before death, lifted catfish
     head craving a hell or heaven
that is saltless, mapless, I believe
     it wanders back to its origin:
unified field of blue before dialectics

     in which language’s first, truest
form was silence (I mean the bluest,
     most perfect silence)—before Eden
even. I believe it returns to its source,
     finally, the way seawater does.