She sorrows by the lisp, waspily, chooses stress

as a means to get through this stenciling

of unpredictability.  Every theory cringes,

trembles behind the viewing glass.

Pardoning my cough executes the edict

of let's ensue.  Let's.  A favorable weathering makes

her a churchly and flourishing nation state, bustle

then bust.  Ensue.  She harvests the headstones of dead

languages.  She flapjacks onto an onionish stack,

can't tell papery film from inner layers, epigraphs

from their epicenters.  Borrows the auditorium's

echo, won't give it back.  More chandelier than

me, whistling a nervous gleam.  I scrawl her words,

siphon their hiving syntax.  Outside, the thrushes

no longer chirrup, bandaged to branches or tangled

in stonewalling, struck by their collective

coverage of grubs.  She smacks the back of my head

with twiggy logic.  It scratches thick, a foreign tongue

borrowed and fumbling.  Thus a feather ruffled is

an announcement, a sound, an erstwhile accent.