(I’ve never met a woman who would disembowel
to make a moot point).

dearest toad,
when the pelicans launched into orbit, I looked at you sideways, circling and circling, the motion of the birds described by some differential equation.
your friend,
frog

But after seeing the bone-lean bodies trailed behind
your soldiers’ growling stomachs, the unearthing
of your uncatchable lizard would have offered you
a sight recognizable though rewritten in rock

wither your athletes/
dissolve your girls/
forget the toxic flesh

From its jaw, Héctor peels a sample of skin. Cuts baleen from its mouth. My body is in waves. The urge to turn from this great unspooling overtakes me.

Microbe plays hopscotch on metal on plastic on leather on the rich juicy arm