We were polar
and bi-pedal.
From our helmets
flowed
genetic hair.
Prepared to fare
the structures—cool
dense regions, closed
magnetic fields—
we lucked
our way
from shield
to shield, one body
to the other.
 
*
 
Believing we
were one of them,
we had been
oiled, we had been
sunned.
Believing that
the day was done,
the moon arcing over the ocean.
Before we took
our temperatures,
our bodies would be
covered in scald
scales and soft
incendiary furs.
 
*
 
Our bodies piled
in rows
in snow:
we carried to the active zone
the ones
we had known best.
Once warned,
our faces would be
shorn, our enemies
would be
informed,
but how the sunlight
shone upon
our mutilated wrists.
 
*
 
We were
wave heating,
but we hated them.
The plasmas
that were
lost in space
were captured
in the cold.
We had been sold
before the aircraft
rolled, our bodies
boarded, bodies
bored by beautiful
coronas.
 
*
 
First one, then two
coronal loops,
we bodied through,
ambiguous.
The statues
smashed,
the crescents
pushed,
the laboratory
nano-flares
beneath the burning
bush. And then
we felt their
soothing touch.
 
*
 
O cool magnetic
force. O
cloud gas. O
uncontrolled and
equilibrius
lost regions.
At once in situ
in our sitting place,
we acquiesced
into a state.
But still the State
decided that our bodies
had to be
contained.
 
*
 
We had been spectral
in our particles.
In a white zodiacal light
we found
our bodies had been
braised,
our faces faded
by a brazen wind.
Before we could begin
to know what happened,
we would have to send
a flare
of observation
to the moon.
 
*
 
Magnetic in our magnitude,
we influenced
our captors to release
the choking sphere.
If we had lived
in fear, we didn’t now.
Our comrades hid
behind the cloud.
Could we let go?
We asked until our
bodies burst,
our ankles pin-
wheeled into outer
space.
 
*
 
We did not know
which way to run,
and so
we wandered
toward the sun, protected
by a psalter.
Our bodied heads un-
helmeted, our
scars and stitches
in our hands,
we hardened and we—
hardening—
laid down in the
dark dell.
 
*
 
It was a wretched
place and we
were also wretched,
quadrupolar sun
and tangled helmet
streamers in our hair.
O village, what’s your
warning flare?
You did not
dare. You did
not dare. And now
we’re here, our
bodies reconfigured,
into bells.