More on: Amy McCann

Cured to permanent gown, a mineral seep—all tears, all weep. The lick I am. The lips I’ll crimp in the swap of elements—the more of them, the more I melt. My backdrop old smoke in the shape of tents, my city most flagrant in absence— gutted cavity under the stilted SOS of stars. I have…

What offers a skeletal peep. Feather-smear, mostly gullet—agape for the secondhand upchuck grub, bolus crammed iridescent with carapace and wing. A holiness, this helplessness, the mother’s tireless, kenotic reconnaissance ending every time with her head bent to her nest of tidbit beggars, X-ray translucent, the tinder of their bones radiant beneath. All hollow. The aerate…

In my mouth the name of God an overripe pear: a grain, a grit on the tongue. A grail, all vowel-shaped gaps, like lipping the rim of an empty cup, that low-frequency opening undoing, unhinging the jaw. God’s name as eyetooth, meat-intended, a visible skeletal hint. God as salve for chalk. For the bent heart,…