they do not speak  
mouths sutured shut  
their words, thoughts, appear on their skin  
like some curious cuneiform, deciphered not
by those who wield the scurrilous scalpels  
that maimed them  

they do not speak  
though their screams appear
as a rapacious rash of cocky consonants,
their whispers as smooth vowels
on their exposed hides      

they do not speak  
but hear the flapping of butterflies’ wings  
the blinking of a dead dogs’ eyes
and the sound stars made  
upon colossal collapse  

they do not speak
but emit eerie odors in fecund olfactory code  
“lesser beasts” read with feral snouts
and see on the breached breaths
the silenced try
to conceal    

they do not speak  
though they see the mocking mouths of their captors
and their words that fly through the air  
slicing through these mutes, as if
they were never there