Queen of the Immortals

In the butcher's larder, offerings
are feathers folded, peacock brooms,
rabbits with features like stitches.

Among them, a displaced vessel:
oil-feathered gift, witch's vase.

The butcher's wife drifts
through its mean neck, faintly wrestling,
becoming cow blank, maggot-dressed.

At a later door, the eager witch,
fractured sketch of a cuckoo,
pecks cracks for her scarab-gloss eyes.

Her, a stick crown for the butcher;
a loose scratching in corners;
a damp slick of newspaper;
a neglected sampler;
a kick in the shoulder
like death to the birds
which once scattered as cake crumbs
where I walked among poppies;

the death of all birds
which ends in the phials
hung out to dry
in the butcher's larder.