Everett Jones

Divorce Song for Fruit Bats

After “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath

A typical story: you

catch              my eye drinking

from a green                     -swirled spill where spores 

of pollen swim                     as tadpoles. Not all

mammals believe         in love

potions, but the black                   -top on which these puddles

rest and call

home is                            a cauldron: hot and night

-colored, vessel for sweet       sap stirred

by wind, iron drenched 

in tar that swallows     heat from

moonlight—it makes us         sick. I know a former

poet-turned-mirror who said now I am

a lake, and I wonder if faithful reflection 

is all we need

bodies for. Aren’t you     tired 

of being mistaken? We’re not

foxes, cats, birds, demons, 

lovers. It’s convincing,

isn’t it? The way      our wide 

brush tongues       take

life from fruit is no more

special than the way we fuck

hanging upside-down and backwards. No 

creature with morals would say

we’re ethereal. What we think of 

as our cave is only             an attic. When the lights 

come on, we scatter.