Hailey Leithauser

Wan oxymoron of a fish, dotted
dun and fledge winged, mud-feathered when
it glides through silt, by nature bottom fed.
...

Philosophic
in its complex, ovoid emptiness,
a skillful pundit coined it as a sort
of stopgap doorstop for those
quaint equations
...

A lot more of than thought, unsought, come out white.
Lemurs of Madagascar, and leopards sans spots.

Brilliant, I think, to spurn pigment and burn
...

The heart of a bear is a cloud-shuttered
mountain. The heart of a mountain's a kiln.
The white heart of a moth has nineteen white
chambers. The heart of a swan is a swan.
...

Midnight's merely blue,
but me, me, me, I'm
through
and through
...

Such green, such green,
this apple-, pea- and celadon,

this emerald and pine and lime
unsheathed to make
...

The heat so peaked tonight
the moon can't cool

a scum-mucked swimming
pool, or breeze
...

Less a nip than gnaw,
the way a goat,

tethered, will ruminate
a rope; the way
...

No other song
or swoop (part
quiver, part swivel and
plash) with
...

O, she says (because she loves to say O),
O to this cloud-break that ravels the night,
O to this moon, its mouthful of sorrow,
O shallow grass and the nettle burr's bite,
...

I don't have to outrun the elephant,
I just have to outrun you.
I don't have to race with a belligerent
ten-point buck, outpace an elephant
...

I was, I was—by its posthumous chomp,
by its bad dab of venom, its joy-buzzer buzz.
If you're ever shanked like the chump
that I was, by the posthumous chomp
...

I was, I was—by its posthumous chomp,
by its bad dab of venom, its joy-buzzer buzz.
If you're ever shanked like the chump
that I was, by the posthumous chomp
of an expired wire, you'll bellow out prompt
at the pitiless shiv when she does what she does.
Was you? I was. By its posthumous chomp,
by its bad dab of venom, its joy-buzzer buzz.
...

Wan oxymoron of a fish, dotted
dun and fledge winged, mud-feathered when
it glides through silt, by nature bottom fed.

Whoever named it named himself a man
of undisputed Christian eye,
who saw in mortal depths a guardian

and humblest trumpeter. God tongue to cry,
it haunts an earth too dread for dread-
filled man til rapture calls: Arise and fly.
...

Fear streamlined to elegance
and elegance made mute
within this skin of gunmetal
and gash mouthed grin. Repute
would have the monster cruel—untrue—
for mannerly cruelty
demands a heart, unwitnessed
in its calm machinery.
...