have you heard that animals
come in more than one form,
not just covered in fur or lined
in scales, in shirts and jeans
they walk, talk and conjugate

have you heard that diseases
are more than just viruses, they
have names like thomas, luke, jeff,
scribbled in notebooks, sipped through
cocktail straws,

this is no friendly cherokee parable
spoken in elderflower and feathery
folklore,
the wolves are here and have always
been, you know they rarely come in ones,
curtailing escape, the abridged version of
all-them-who-called-wolf because we don't
cry wolf, we seek wolf.

speak wolf.
so surprised to have them at our throats
when we have been no angels--
neither devils
just another injured animal
trying to make peace.

There was this dream
peaches, grapes, the ocean
a wind that spoke in salty whispers
my skin looked real, my laugh was real
Oh God, please let me make it to the water
Let me make it down the hill
but when i turned around
a black dog was chasing me
it could have been a bear
i woke up saying
no
no
no
in a dark room

he once blurred out a photo
of a diary entry, but I have
read through many things
and beneath the gaussian
he had wrote

*I'd rather be alone

I want a typical romance
I will jump in the pool naked
brisk and covered in goosebumps
taut, skin straining out
if you offered to kiss me and
hold a split peach in handfuls

love a girl like pyrite
when you found me in the mines
shook me from your baskets
saw me glint in the sunlight
said my  irises shifted like tiger's eye
i was never what you thought

love a girl like pyrite
if she's your gold then i'm a
shade of amber, a copper quarter
if I was hard then she is soft and
quick in your hands like a gardner snake
faint and without teeth, tangling through
the grass and you love the silent chase
the girls that flip belly up and
kiss your corners, kiss your
borders, rub away the ash
and lay themselves over your grenades
your sticks of dynamite you blew
me away with

love a girl like pyrite
because I was a fool's gold,
the normal luster of something
grand, sieved through your tables
back into the river, the unspoken
daughters of not-good-enough
lying in wait, picked up by farmers
by men who sell, who hock, who
pawn, washed down in Vindicator Valley
run between thumbs, turned up amongst
rocks the ordinary, run-of-the-mill
we can only be imitators of
the greatest


love a girl, who's fool's gold
would you find her?
would you keep her?

she planted secrets once
potted them with fresh
soil and watched them
grow, they were never

weeds

while you were eating
cherry pie that sunday
after i reached for your
hand and your fingers
didn't curl around mine--

i took to the trees behind the cabin
and stayed the mossy grove buried
in this golden scratch
the neighbor's conversation downwind
about the mountain lion they'd spotted
and the spiritual sort of fear I felt with
my eyes closed, the mechanical click
of my own heartbeat, how things
used to flow and now they only
swarmed,
always
swallowed.

i was singing songs to call you out,
like you did the first time, when you
came up around the hillside and
followed me a ways out--
softly at first and then no more,
replaced by the force that came
upon me, where suddenly I was
uprooting trees, picking the most
desolate, gnarled aspens--unhinging
their roots to press my heel into their
soft bases, hulking forward and watching
them stretch out and out and out--

I found old yarn and tied
it for later, to find, to untie
to hope for second chances
I left the copse and you were


eating cherry pie on the porch
rummaging through coolers
oil sloshing through your bones
dragon fire in your blood
hard-headed over puerile matters
over your time, over the weeks
staunchly grounded into your own
wild western ways,

The duck's back, the bear's pelt
You've been roaming alone in the forests
As the beasts do, the lost, the frightened,
Admiring the darkness of your own shadow
The way it draws and casts away,
Doubly conflicted of your nature that
Mostly takes and takes and takes
Bears and
Men and
You.

before you left i dragged you the mall, we actually took your car
and I told you about the skin under my thigh that felt like a mountain
pasture and then we went into Teavana where the cashier manipulated me
into buying forty dollars worth of tea leaves and I felt like **** afterwards
because i hadn't really wanted to buy forty dollars of tea leaves. You didn't
roll up your sleeves, but you stopped me in the middle of the walk way by
Starbucks and the American Girl store and took the bag. You took my wallet,
my receipt, my heart, and told me stay there. When you came back, you said
you had returned it.  I stood in awe of you, ready to cry. You had skin, lungs,
eyes and a mouth, living, breathing, ready to lie at my expense.  That was the first
time I held your arm in months. Looking back, maybe it was only child parts of me
clinging to the one person that continued to stand up for me, i don't know. i really don't
know.

I still have that receipt.

I had a dream
I awoke to my own
I made it out of a never-ending hallway where
truckers bore down on my back, I
saw the morning through a crack in the woodwork
I could breathe the air,
lay out over the trees below me
if so tangible, vivid, how not was it real?
who is to say these illusions aren't physically palpable
a photo etched over in pencil, grainy
my hands were soft and drawn
but when you wake up in a place where you sleep
you open your eyes

I always wondered when
I was going to stumble upon
one of your pictures, I ended
up realizing you're not pouting.
I didn't really want you to anyway
I've been doing the same things I
was doing with Chaz, trying out
the nun business trying to be the
****** freaking mary so as not to
hurt you, but I'm not actually
hurting you am I? Because you're
doing just fine and I don't need
to walk on eggshells, I love you
but I don't need to walk on
eggshells I LOVE YOU but
I don't need to walk on
******* eggshells.

I'm done pouting.

I would never build
her of my problems
I'd understand why
all inventions hate their creators
trying to do for the good of themselves
others, if they contribute
but i would build
her of my problems
then maybe i could
make it work

I want to be beautiful
like that, a thrifted soprano
note, high above the choir
a dipping lilt that will
hush
hush
she blooms

I remember when I was young
my dad used to be the last one
at the table, because he served
himself so slowly that the rest
of us were done, by the time
he got there. So I would stay
in my seat and play with my
peas till he finished, so we
could leave together. Now
I am older and he stays up
to watch TV, I have other
things to do, but I have
to say goodnight to him
before I go upstairs
because that is the
only way i know
how to say
I love you

it's strange
where I stored away
all my loyalties, you
think you can bring
someone back with
courage or bravery
but you're only being
a child, really,

i threaded them
through each vertebrae
and stained every moment
with ink, every truck-ride
soaked in an alan jackson
song

I don't want to haunt you,
but at night if you are alone
or with a dead arm beneath
a pretty girl, deeply introspective
with the moon on your face
and you begin to tear into
yourself as if something
is lost or fading

all you'll find is a rung
of brass keys where I
told myself i could
where no other woman
has been, and she certainly
won't,

if storms are named after people
and every place is a concentrate
of you and me then
i have saturated the walls
in your peace and strength
with all my keys and loyalties
hung in the places you go
to find yourself.