Bed

Warm feathers over air and sponge
flesh, nature’s comfort: a live bed
eats the pea that would purple the
princess, and from five hundred fowl
one claw pokes up to scratch the fat
prince from twitchy sleep into dreams
of smooth seas as the flock walks out,
carries them from their room, from her
father’s castle and kingdom through
foreign lands until desert, beach
or our moon’s pale shell curves away
beneath them as they wake, startled
and naked before one thousand
exhausted, inquisitive eyes.

Published in the now-defunct Kill Author