I am an animal and other animals are animals / I am an animal and other animals are anomalies

we worked we wormed
on the roots / on the bodies
of fruit we never tasted /

Anything can be a time machine.
For us it was the elms grown crooked
into each other, knobby-rooted
& shooting nine-stories into the sky.

I could never trust what the blood said was mine, / how the blood sung a song of myself.

One hangs on a cross, the other / on a plaque; one says let me save you, the other leave me save yourself:

instead of scripture, / i read her body / as my midrash