I’ve no such use for new knees,those new titanium knees.They weren’t there, in the garden,planting our first seeds, gravel pockedand stinging. They weren’t thereto scrub stains from the floorboards.They never lowered me gently into grief. Those are not the knees of a boyon a beach, new to sand, water,and the hard wash of tide –not […]
After the pops we watched,from the window. Rabidor not, the raccoon flailedlike ribbons on a demo fan,life pushed out like pulled airin the driveway. Two morefrom the cop to secure an end,a spectacle, a gathering.Five cracks in the drivewayto bring the neighbors outfor a killing. The mowers wind down.We watched in awe the lastfew pulses […]
Is it a greater mercyto pinch the injured waspbetween folds of two plyrather than let Bella, rousedin an ancient dance –paw and tap and bark and paw,committed to her brute dutyas guardian of the floorboards? Which is the lesser killing –quick death in the wrong abode, orthe slow denial of teeth and tongueprolonged in a […]
Just a forelimb on the road,careless as a twig,but no plunder for crows,no worthy feast for a scavenge,just hoof, hide and bone. And that’s how they left her,a narrow remain, somehowshorn and distant thrownas if her full and russet framehad been lifted, held aloftand in sacrifice taken up,into some sanctified boundingwhere car and deer ne’er […]
Lumbricus Rubellus,or perhaps a finishing nail, 6d –I can’t tell from here,with these glasses –old ‘scripts – old eyes –shallowing focus. But, it is there,below the radiator,and the radiator is pink.It is there in dust – on pinefloorboards – unmoving –shriveled in droughtin the first case – bent,rusted and uselessin the latter. Either way – […]
Ah, that first year – when we still imaginedour sustenance – those first kennebecs,huge in the manure field, papered like birch,soft as creamed cheese. Dave’s mom planted there, but she was dead.He asked only a smidge of harvestfor the plot, new turned from blackand hereford compacted absence. And maybe he tasted his mother’s apron.Maybe he […]
It is 4 a.m.,and a black dog breakscrust on old snow – stumbles.And a full moon loomsto reveal just easta crackling of limbs felledby gathered frosts and westa barn owl arcs silent – a slurryof cream, hunger and brownwinter kill hovered and plungedby moon and yellow porchlight.A black dog stiffens and sniffs –limbs give no […]
