I collect the reverberations

of the songs of our dead

into a glass. The amplitude

of their voices so high, the

glass cracks. They danced

to talking drums. & ogene.

We dance to the riddim of

guns & gurgles of blood.

The harpist rubs his fingers

around the rim of a glass filled

with mercury, the vibration

says, Blood is steel. Then, we

drink from our hands, because

our kylixes taste like the tip

of a bullet. Mammal us, we give

birth to our fears alive. & nurse

them into a plague, into ruin.

That is how we self–destruct.

I pour our seethed tears into

another glass; it cracks. What

breaks a glass is always a soft

language. Say, hope. Say, Love.

Say, freedom. What mends us

is agony. & in every version of

this elegy we end with thirst at the

shoreline of a river, afraid to drink.