The Animal I Keep in the Cage of My Bones

by Leah Falk

For the body

Alan Turing, age 16

is a machine, sharing its eyes
with the horse and the cinemascope,
blood with the gas engine, fountain pen.
What have I in common
with other living things? The moment
a dinosaur’s jaw cracked
in two — one half snapping birdlike,
the other ground to powder. We have
that. We have the objects in this room
where a billion years have come
and laid down on the tile, seeping
out the screen door and down the garden
drain. This parlor: dresser scarf — ashtray —
good light for reading — easy chairs
with ribbing. Moonstone bust of a mother,
a child rising out of her, mountain
from slip-strike. Although it hurts me, out
of a living line, out of stone or meat, I choose
myself again, again that is one of me, here
where my carriage grew vertical, where my fists
forgot the heavy ground. But your body, wedge,
remembered. Cartridge leaking color.
On the year’s white page, parting
black from un-black. I don’t feel much
like writing more today.