Ryan Downum

I Keep Trying to Dissect the Sky
    for Monica Berlin


from itself. A ventriloquist of crows
speaks my name. My name

night splintered from
the field. I duct-tape

it back together. I pull myself
from the

magician’s hat. A grasshopper’s eye.
Flowers spurt from the cathedral.

Flowers remove their faces.
They shatter. They hum.






Exactness


found in God’s
fingerprint. Mirage

sifted from
mirage. The daffodils

burst into starlings.
My body

the end of the
field. In shallow light

I speak my name hollow.
A prayer of color.

An emptiness peeled.