Rhode Island Red

I will etch ghazals with long fingernails
into prison walls if you will search me,

spray the graffiti of my heart
onto rusted iron trestles

and the back-bare keepings of run-down schools,
if I could be your common cog,

a wattle you witch, a morning crow,
and my cursive jerks and scratches,

capital feathers pulled across a page,
slaughtered and sacrificed for you,

corners turned headless—
I’ll be your grandiosity, your largesse,

no nighthawk swoop or lark climb,
no swallows’ sweep along the river,

only your illicit tongue keening in darkness,
waiting the sun within a tall, wide fence.

Jeff Burt