beat (poem)

beat

they sat down to write songs

knuckles out, on clenched fists

making the skin of a drumhead

feel a this, this, this

contemplated a rhythm line

what, of another land, would do

Of seven sands, of seven shores

melt them into glass, and mold them into flutes

And voices, ten at once in their timbres

One note alone from each cohort

Taken by echo and passed to the next

To detonate with a bomb’s report

beat

for sport

(2026, Stephanie Foster)