Flitch of Fetch

Bring it home and you’ve won.
Catch your flesh and carve it,
Cure a slice and keep it.

Salt it well; don’t eat it.
That’s you, pal. Just like you
Not to see it. Look sharp.

It’s in here, next to you.
You’re in here with the thought
That this is just us and you,

But no. Your fetch is here,
The blood and the skull bowl
That churns with us and you.

And you thought you were it,
You were all flesh of you.
No, you’re words, too. You flinched.

The Gloves Make the Hand

The first words carved as such

Were for goods and spells, aids

For lords, for wealth and power

Past death. Tongues had been used

For all sorts of things, and

Had no need of ranked wealth,

But tongues caught from the air

Like birds and bats in nets

Were, from the first, for power

To keep a zoo of power,

Kings who thought they could rule

Past age, past death, past flesh.

They were both wrong and right.

For them, no—no such luck,

But the spells, oh, the spells

Still talk to us from tombs

And bricks, old walls and dumps.

And what do we mean, us?

We mean you. We’re the spells.

No one of you lives on

Through us. But we in you.