two poems

So You Would Like To Be My Poet?

I would, I say. What makes you so good,
you say. Well, I say, fumbling my papers,
like fire I take, briefly, the form of what
I destroy. Why haven’t I heard of you,
you say. You will love me, I say, for the knife
in my heart. Look, I say, it goes in here.
You say, under your breath, making a note,
Thinks he’s Lorca. What else, you say.
My poems, I say, interrupt you in the road
like children in a brass band. While I’m
driving? you say. My poems follow the blind
force of nature, and bestial motion.
You say, making a note, Steals from Jenkyn.
I come at you slow, I say, kicking over
my chair, through the murky waters
of mid-range literary magazines! Anyway,
you say, I have your books and will
get back to you. Oh fuck off, I say. Ah! you say.

Dreams of Scarlett the Red Dog

            Out of the dust of four directions
limps my dark-fur mother,
                        pietà of the ditches,

            blood-drinker, prophetess,
her myriadfold goblins
                        sipping malt liquor

            from her paps, she bites my leg,
I yip I yip I yip
                        Do not murder me, mother!

             I haven’t yet learned
to cross the mountains!
                        She spares me,

              her malignant nestlings
stumbling after. From under a tree
                         I watch villagers

              their wolfdogs their pitchforks
stone her, hag of hell …
                         She limps off

               to the fields, her feral ones scream
in the night, the harvest
                         sinks on the vine.