J.J. Smith's "Numbers"

Harvest

Drop him, Lord

De-leash your avatar

remove his belongings: scripture, wallet, emblems,

the fleshy-pink, mole-rat-state of nature cocooning him–shed! shed!

he shrivels, buried in vines

he breathes in detritus and waste he becomes (what we became)

he breathes us; digests, deposits us

to worms, we move

to muddy pockets

to water bodies; we sink, we ferment–

“ah, such legs,” Sun says, spinning us in its glass,

“so finely aged . . . I’ll have more.”