Can The Interstices Be Written Into?

I would have muttered “breeze,”
but there’s nothing promising about it
or a crumb of wall to escape it. And then

there was the day we named the clouds’
shapes “shiftless” and after their onomatopoeia
blowing through the roofs.

We ended up with all sorts of words
that tried to set first for the insurance claims.
They assured us

they had it under control. They left our clothes
the syllables of smoke. That day, ducks fondled
the alphabet into the sextant

of our rigorous universe, accommodating
the tests of the landscape chained to our torsos.
I would try to be cute with it, throwing boomerangs

in a grizzly roar and landing them in your lap
like a dog — so much glow between galaxies
stripped away their bodies.

-C.S. Henderson