I don't know how I ended up with this poem, but here it is.
Appetites of Franz
Kafka cultivates begonias,
purchases cages, noodles. He bends over
mammals beneath the lawn chair, frowning.
I am seated nearby facing light pollution.
We speak of Anne, nearly twenty years old now,
living somewhere in the Midwest.
They say he dies of tuberculosis, but I know
his fear of sharks, restaurant reviews, and the like.
He has a thirst for raw milk,
then demands only small foods.
He consults stars, dark wool oracles
in woody shops with velvet smooth edges.
The country swims around him
in the candle-lit heart of the head-shaped crystal.
I know their power, too.
At the end, no food satisfies.
He gathers cuttings in his fine hands.
His arms are thin from parlor tricks,
tepid jokes and twice-boiled tea.
I have a story, he will tell you,
and I think you’ll like it,
even if your appetite is for Victorian perversions.
Kafka returns past his fear, puts aside
the heart attack, fills the cages beneath the chairs
with jays, crows and jackdaws. He feeds them.
He tells me again of Anne, how he wants
some uncertain terms, some stuff of life,
and has rashes about her in his throat.
The birds have appetites, and he has grown
adept at catching the vermin of their needs.
He holds a struggling thing before me
and says: this will become bird.
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