In the Hatchery

110 JENNY GROPP HESS IN THE HATCHERY in front of me is a photograph of a girl I do not know. hushed, her tongue is an embassy and when breathing it moves towards broadcast, a tree flaring up from a seed, a tree that numbs the wind and ripe, I do not speak from my high-necked branch, I hold my head like another language— at the moment of trembling the eye is a leaf— I consider how torturous— the best flower is a bird and I, a refrigerated bloom dropped in an empty passage, 111 wearing dresses, waterless waves about my unpainted spine, my insides shaped like early weapons, the soft dark wingspan turning in me, a flag— and layered shadows on the wall tell me I can’t choose my own ghost and otherwise I haven’t heard back I haven’t heard back you don’t pull on the root knot I haven’t heard back the mast rises through the fabric and the season drops its brightest stitches this theater was meant to feel abandoned I don’t call where my hand falls a settlement I fall like salt on a space and circumstance appears— ...