Strix

You can come out now.

Dear Cassette,

Didn’t you hear it?

We are ashore, Cassette,

Opened lip for watered tooth

Coughing dots and the advantages of air,

Like running dogs on static sand

Were we, rust and pathogen electric,

Winnowing through the brown grass

To settle its corpse in the oil-calm

Of a lap, frowns of starfall, waking

What was once no longer you

To the fumes of civilian hunger,

Wedding us to the beach afresh;

We have landed—

A thousand rains away.