You’ve got snow leopard eyes.
I’m an oldwife underwing
perched on the last wheat stems,
sunning myself
before the cold world sleeps.
Frostbound tigress,
prowl under the bridge of trolls:
The toll is a knife in your mouth,
and I’d break my heart on your headstone
if I could just find the perfect
elegy to sing for you.
The ice on the reeds
at the river’s bank
melts beneath your breath.
I want that breath on my neck–
sandpaper tongue–
and teeth to reap
the red grains from it.
This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.
