The Loudspeaker of the People’s Army

In the Ogaden desert, they skim it from muddy water,

pour it over cactus meat: ululations crisp as morning birds.

                                     *

With fossils they tune innards.  With tails write. 

Pause for good light.  Let it pass through remains,

the Loudspeaker warbling in low tones.

                                     *

In Oaxaca, they carve it of radishes. Contorted

shapes shaved into violins, slung into trees 

cutting a thick, rained foliage sonata

for African bees.  Some measures drizzling

the branches others hidden in the roots,

                                     *

the pulse endlessly trilling

in the City of Angels, where it

resurfaces by the docks:

fifty varieties of night shade and sweet pearl,

fifty sacks of thistle grown entirely by pitch.

                            *

As the what if of the inflamed song

split the surface like a whale’s tail,

Argentines collected sun-bleached

cardboard in the storm of bells, knowing

hours by the heat of another’s body.

                            *

When we fix the trains will we hear it en masse,

the solipsistic question: why do they hate us? flaking

to an inarticulate texture,

dusty rafters quaking, until undone, hornlike

piece by piece we enter the Loudspeaker

addressed as stranger?

                            *

You are the last stranger,

little organ, little ear

all your lorries loaded with air.

When you feel me kiss you

during the overture of wild goats,

I’m caressing a rhythm.