Deep in a dune, the black swan is forming
yolk-sure with feathers plucked
from ether like loose leaves wheeling in
exilium, piled
in the clipped wind, no place
headed to.

Brother sun, sister moon, can
uncle deer hear me?

I hear all-night hammering like theremin
cello’s pizzicato, dappled
things
that flutter in ill-lit hallways to a
cerebrum. It kisses little
lips milk-sweet as mudroom, softer
meadow

amid stereocilia between sieve at the feet
and the sea-purity ring of
dove-breath
become jingle mind-bell
that all day
I wear on house catcaller like reminder
of some spiritous

cactus, hidden
under the bed of mama’s latter-day desert
roses, the near all-crèche-pink-sweet
spiders staying
awake, to birdies’ ceiling,
why-silence,
the end-white aurorae building
up, from green paraffin fingers 

webbed
with worshipping sky-is-cracking-open as a cave
color, bdellium fine diving, throw net,
shoal of ware varicose
gold-veined as noosphere — its feet,
its hands, tired, of
decaying —

on its way
walkalated to open seeding,
manna
alighting, virga o’er
virid in-utero, vitiviniculturally plowed river
mouth, ecphonesis
on chrysalis-soapbox of the wait
for 

washer’s water breaking as timed to ooze
an operculum parade of
noodle-foamy, liquid carrara into a
starved-quiet sacrarium,
and pluming again from plenary
pulse 

diaspora, immaculate conception,
mute cool light, out the door
at five in the morning through blinds-down
feeling my hands,

chiromancy to chronos this blackness
key as knob, exoskeletal
hope, air-antennae
tucked in walling wail. I
must become smaller,
to breathe the
pretty thing that lives
in the house.

Agnes Hanying Ong is a writer of poetry and songs. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, on Gravel Magazine, The Scores, Rogue Agent Journal, Failed Haiku, 2019 Surrealist/Outsider Anthology and other wondrous places.