On Constitution Hill

Kayt Burgess

Bury me on Constitution Hill

near the bench under the oak

where I sat with my passerine lungs whistling.

Virtue loves a steep incline and a kept audience:

the dogs will find me first.

Not in the skips near Tepid Baths

where we collided, solid and liquid.

Me, draining into gutters, faults; you, the city concrete and everywhere.

Vats of ferment stirred by the bones

of divers hunting the meat of gentle living.

Not off the pier behind the Railway Station, our home,

Where you rewrote nighttime’s library with vagina wormholes

And I sweated guarana on Procrustus’s desk chair.

No, not the sea -

to be foam and ambergris, or a sporting dolphin’s pearl.

Not with the remnants behind the Persian rug wholesaler

with my skirt around my waist,

knees held together with lycra and the Locrian mode.

No candids; only a headshot:

character corpses collect no sympathy.

So bury me on Constitution Hill,

to the tune of locust wings and moon hymns,

one thousand minutes in the future of mourning.

Open the dirt and run;

leave my decay to the gentleness of giants,

lest the scales of the ancient chromosomal find you wanting.