By the pool the vultures
circled and perched
on the roof
to watch his naked
body rock
over mine. Danger
is never as
interesting
as the possibility
of danger. As if wanting
me were a song he
hummed
without knowing, I
listened
with eyes closed and waited
for the pattern to
break.
The chachalaca sang
like scrap metal dragged
across more scrap
metal.
We lay all day like
fruit
burst open for the birds to take
and awoke at night to
a crashing
outside our room,
which was not a break-in
but the crude drum
of the mangos falling
in the garden
out of their ripe
skins.
No pomp, just
bruising.

Alexandria Hall is a writer, musician, and educator from Vermont. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU. She is founder and editor-in-chief of Tele- Magazine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative, The Bennington Review, BOAAT, Memorious, Foundry, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere