prognosis of sound

i know uranium splitting makes a sound
	
the sound of vanishing children
	of a pillar of fire razing the land into silence
	the groan of bodies     spilling their pollen
	of a red rose     holding its eyes in its palms
	begging for water     and dying when having it
	of the river still running      black with the rainfall and rot

i know hydrogen fusing makes a sound
	
nuclear collisions       the sun strumming its static
	drone against the microphone      from here we
	can’t hear the screaming        muffled by the lullaby
	of the vacuum       which protects us from knowing it
	we lounge on the beach        and take better photos in the light
	the snap of aperture blades immortalizing our ignorance

i know a cell splitting makes a sound
	
a stutter into existence        some mirror or almost
	a baby tumbling over itself       out of dream this
	spiral of blood and bone in spin        the nerves in its spine
	singing up toward their god       that the flesh duplicates
	itself into applause        until it reaches the cupid’s bow
	and sews this soon-to-cry body shut at the mouth

i know a cell fusing makes a sound
	
the sound of the phone ringing       and my mother
	on the other line in the quiet         of the doctor telling me
	once you’re in the woods      you’re never out       if you’re
	not paying attention       the woods will swallow you whole
	that a tumor is a choir in discord        that you have to kill
	a monster in order to become one        that the threads of
		this body break every once in a while and you        just
		try to put it back together         knowing it should be a good thing for
		two lovers to kiss     but when one is mutated it fractures the other
		and when the chain reaction bleeds it kills everything and i
		hate that the landscape of war is everywhere       that it’s in me
		that the song of grief is a violent one that my gift to my mother
		is telling her how much       i love my life.        that i can forgive everything
                even when i shouldn’t. that everything i don’t know i’m trying to know
                         now.      that i hear my body dying all around me and
		                      it thumps and hums along to the tune
				      of the song my sister used to sing
	                              in our breathless blue house
				      when the killing came from outside
				      not the stars cackling in the caverns
				      of this sewn-to-survive doll

still i’m carrying the woods inside       all its 

birds of prayer          winged palms               unfolding
in a hymn of dark       eyes floorless             listening
for shimmers of sap       singing out
from the burl of a ginkgo tree