The image of wildflowers had stormed into the house.
Its impact was beyond what the book could hold.

A hen hangs its cry on the fences.
My ears rush to save it
from crashing into space.

Phantoms shake the dog.
Its bark leaps out of its mouth.

Dusk has been wounded.
Women come to gather its blood in a vessel.

A rosy piglet, an apple in its mouth,
is placed within the landscape,
competing with the absurdity of the cornfield,
which has long been grinding it down with the question:
were Napoleon’s cannons or epaulets
heard in the atmosphere?

From the epaulets, toward the universe,
hundreds of corollas migrate in silence.
The spirit of someone exceedingly caustic
will strip them down to their essence.

In the sunlight,
battle plans, like seeds,
await an indifferent hand
to cast them into the world.

I open a straight parenthesis,
within which the darkened plain unfolds.
Ordinary cannonballs tear through
fresh linen shirts.