Caged

I have seen you sitting in the wrinkled sack of a home
Your moist, savory stories slapped shut in the folds of your earth,
Pregnant, drunk, and raining.

I have seen the blue-red shriek, the aboriginal music
Piercing through your core, the survivor among your many deaths.
The bird peeking, through the twisted pathways of your mouth, your throat,
Making music.

Somewhere, in the fringes
In the silence of crooked, domesticated cages
Somewhere, in the curse and blessings
Between the endless rain of poetry
And the incantation of a stark, humdrum life,
I have seen the caged bird sing of birth and rebirth,
I have seen it flash its nude, hungry desires
Pushing against your ribs, your heartbeats.

I wonder what keeps her alive in the edge
Where every surrender is an echo
of her last voice,
The voice of a long-buried earth swims back,
Resurfaces from the abyss.

Savouring each frenzied stroke,
You carry in your bloodstream
The bird and the briny, womanly tales.

Ekphrastic Poem