Brigitte Goetze

It wasn’t the oval receptacle,
cramped and dim like a bird house,
nor the noise—this racket,
insistent like woodpecker hammering,
followed by a deep, drawn-out, three-toned boom
as if some prehistoric monster banged
again and again against the boundary of time—
rather, I was overcome
by a never-before encountered agitation:
a million alien bats beating
high-powered wings in my face,
breaking and entering, tearing
from my tissues all they could snatch,
leaving me, prone on a bier,
a plucked chicken, waiting
for the high-priest to augur
the tracing of their flight.