Book of the Dead

The alphabet of complacency is but hieroglyphics
of unmet needs, metallic in their lacquer to hide the cracks
in the wall, as if ostrich feathers were not truth
but lead. When we abandon our words, only images are left:
alligators and falcons watching through their stone eyes
at our nomadic resolution, waiting at the end of the river
to cardiectomize us and swallow our hunger whole.

—Alex Harwood