Greg Wrenn – Visitation

through the battered walls and rode me
till he had full access to my brain:

then I could smell the wet pavement

of his city, hear its starlings

and bats feeding above the dry aqueduct;
and he could read my tally of failures,

taste the hard water of my birthplace,
its muscadine wine.

He came here to study love.

How to be with a creature who’s forgotten
what it’s like to be bodiless

and undistracted.

Before he left, peering into me,
he cocked his head like a parrot

listening affectionately to the drunken rant

of his master. And I felt like a horse
I saw once on a mesa.

Her master had hobbled
her front legs. She threw herself

forward to feed, she could not run.