The room erupts, and I'm getting impatient.
I wanna say we played hangman on the
backs of paper placemats.

Spent all day kicking a can around the driveway,
as you peeled an orange. Last week three
friends died on the highway.

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A bell of dogbane
out in the yard.
The smell of gasoline
right outside the car.

An empty desk.
A handwritten note
pinned to the insides
of the children's coats
with no address.

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How the men prod.
A chain I don't dare to pull.
My god,
am I the bear or the bull
or both?

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I won't miss
the drip of the IV,
blip of my pulse on a bright screen
in a sterile room,
white-knuckled grip on the bed rail.
Crippling debt and a wet blood trail,
feral and crude.
I trusted no one but you.

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I hear pointe shoes
like they're hooves.
I feel open as a hymn book.
No one sings the praises. Voiceless as the saints 'cause
the bravest ones always took
out their own tongues.

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As a feral horse unstable,
incapable of nine-to-fiving.
The brochures and 'zines,
TV screens. Hey, look alive, kid.
I looked deep inside myself.
It felt a lot like when we'd go
dumpster diving.

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In the backroad
lying about
a death.
A Buick and a buck,
antlers velvet to the touch.
Will I ever love someone enough
to not run
from the sight of their guts?

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A canoe at the livery
rusted through, and you're shivering.
Here's where I gutted you, and you'd forgiven me
in a dream.
Staring daggers from the stern,
their king's ashes in an urn.
I'm always wearing badges I didn't earn.

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Slicking clove oil on my teeth
pricking new through gums.
I will grin and bare them
at the warren of hares who
stick to their guns and beliefs.

Holed up in Jesse's garage,
on the Iowa farm,
outlines in dust on the wall
where the rifles aren't.

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Do you think she ever turned to the bear stars
the way I do
and finally started to feel at all,
the Parthenon in free fall
barely there in the background.

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