At a distance, a cardinal sings

its red feathers covered with the soot

of this cigarette night,

Kentucky back roads 

I’d wished to be my home.

On the gravel next to

trees filled with the smoke of ghosts

My car stands silent and my feet wobble.

My stomach burns;

My plucked throat.

Soon tears blind

this flightless scapegoat.

The tobacco-winds target me

and I taste tar,

sticky blackness of a borrowed tongue.

I’ve suffocated,

ignited and baited,

like coal left

damp and cold after campfires.

Y’all don’t know

I was a goat destined to be a bird.

Y’all won’t know

I’ll be a cardinal even while exiled.