He chipped away at wood, stone, brick.
Named the things he desired
with hieroglyphics, Greek,
and graffiti.

The clay baked for hours
until the letters showed their lips,
labial, ravaged.
He etched, used scrimshaw,
soapstone.

Knew whatever could molt
would settle
between cracks in the rocks
where he knelt, muscled,
a piece of chalk in his fist.

The sun rose behind him.
His centaur bled, red pooled
around the cloven hooves.
No longer monstrous,
no more half-immortal.

Creature with a horse’s slender legs,
a belly filled with colic.
Beast felled by star thistle.
But then, he’d already written
of a rat-toothed wind that can set a dollar bill
soaring
above the ice.