The Scent of Burning Hair

THE SCENT OF BURNING HAIR

by Sherwin Bitsui

I circle my shadow
at 5 AM when crickets gather in the doorway
showing their teeth and striped tongues
silver eyes
singing about a wind blown desert
sinking into the waist of the setting sun.

I have become a man crawling over his broken fingers
searching for a ring to plant my lips on,
eating cinders while breaking eggs on my brother's white skin.

I have either become a black dot growing legs
running from the blank page,
or the mud that is caked over the keyhole of a church
hiding its bandaged eyes.

This bed quivers,
it wants to become a spider again
and sting silent the antelope that leap over children
whose mothers abandon their pots
and follow hoof prints into the city
smudging themselves with the smoke of burning hair.
Look! There between the eyes of the horizon
two crows waiting for our bodies.

Imagine this at 5 AM,
when the river slides into a silent city
stuffed with decaying corn husk,
when everyone discovers razors in the womb of this land,
and the sun decides which bridge
should be covered with skin and leaves
and which should remain as goat ribs submerged in
sand smelling of diesel engines.