I. When Asked What the Hole Was For, the Child Said It Was a Grave
To be in this body with a rucksack and wet flesh
on a wounded planet’s back. Solutions: the one-bullet gun,
the riding whip, or the lost gauze. I chose not the first
and saw some world:
Orchard trees sewn into hospital gowns grasp at dusk,
at each others’ appaloosa leaves. And each dusk the same—
the botched sun, the moon nuzzling our flea-bitten galaxy.
Down all the rows, bees build mausoleums under gurneys.
Gods of the abandoned silo, blackbirds dance and caw
through a broke tractor. The mule rebuilds himself
from a farmstead’s rusty machinery—heads out for another go
at the golden hills, the earth moist with dead medicines.
II.
On the radio in a white city I built from planet-skin, the pretty voice describes
[tab15]workers[/tab15]
who have dug their last ditch and used it. Flocks of birds pretend to be water, filling
[tab15]the culverts[/tab15]
an old man crawls through—feather streams cut him into spirit, the bright seaming
[tab15]of sound.[/tab15]
III. In Deference to the Creation, All the Medics Have Laid Down Their Harps
This is the laboratory of dust.
Men invent cemeteries
where they bury knots of DNA
inside the skulls of buried women
who unravel the helices with teeth
as small as the white mountains
where we fashion needles from bones
that the earth spits up. Sit up straight—
this is the tailor’s forgotten shop.
Animal hides hang on blue wires torn from sky.
Hide, animal. Hang on. The sky just tears at its blue,
a wire in the hideous body on which the animals hang.
This is the land of plenty
of florescent lights and not much else.
Our new veterinarian carves
the cow’s heart out, then cuts off
her hooves and strings two together as if in prayer—
puts that bundle in the breast. Rest. And fluids.
IV. The Ambulance Lights Looked Like Fireworks on Television
Outside the circus tent, two chimpanzees arm wrestle
to the growls and squawks of the other animals. One arm
snaps like—if you want to hear it—a rice cake.
I collect my money from the bookie, then open the flap.
The magician wraps her in an American flag
and then cuts her in half with a lumberjack’s saw—
it’s not hard to imagine the cloven stomach,
blood spraying like sawdust into the audience.
If you remember that none of this is real
it makes it easier.
In the workshop, we made chairs from what good pieces
of the past we could find. We made a fire with the rest.
What was it like to live while the world was dying?
I want to hold your hand, walk with you
into the blue, wind-lipped waves and past
the grove of sunk trees to a village
at the bottom of the reservoir. We could dance
in the old church—two lovers sharing the last breath,
moving in perfect unison beneath a dark weight.
V.
And then I was carried home, if you could call it that. I found the avenues the same, but unsigned. In the foothills where I was born, pines had encroached into many fields that were once plowed. Walking there was like walking into a night that I, in my innocence, had contrived, and when I looked I saw no man or building clear to the distant horizon. A thin layer of pollen covered everything, and I felt as though something too big to name had finally folded.
