(after Bennie Flores Ansell’s “Sprocket Swarm Migration”)
So many squares
cut away from darkness,
untethered from light,
lighter than any wish
that cast us adrift—
Massed where we are,
we form new continents:
room upon room upon room
in tenements that wobble
under the pinned weight
of our labor. From on high,
little squares of laundry
strung on clotheslines
on the balcony. We are
so slight: an army of ants,
echo of some fusillade
still falling over the Pacific.
Flight pattern of starlings:
a million eyelash marks
in the desert, trembling
before or after sleep.