Fond of Our Shadow

words by Patrick Ignasiak
illustration by Chelsey Wang

Bite down on the umbilicus, resurrecting the road. Weathered
        asphalt reflects the death of birds, and their shadows
elongate on: teeth extending beyond the furrows
of your body, just beginning,
                                                                                  extrasensory
        from rewoven molecules beneath a heap of mud. Still,
you know nothing of sleep, lengths of carbon chains
         unspooled from your pupils in the manner of the
worm in the beak of the bird in the emerging
                              stereoscopic integration of multiple
                                                              hole substructures.

You straddle my lap, a thin impression of bone feathered
                 thinner by looped and relooped protein folds. The
        mnemonics are moot, but, glacier-verb neologisms
                               implied a finger-on-thumb reverb of
                                                                              gliding
                               through the green of the
                                                                              grove
beyond the road. But then, today, feeding endlessly the throat,
             this carpet of chewed charcoal with dossiers of all
     the dead, the same palate-rattling bolt of thought.
                                                                  Certain animals,
never specified, seized in pores unorganised, for
     example, a pack of wolves as non-decomposable
variable distances, expressed as your freckle
     substructures… Is it fair to say
                                                           anything at all?