Face-to-Face with One of the Gods

'éetu: so be it, he says—
& I ignite a flame

striking a wooden match
along the torso of

my god: a face mirroring
a boy afraid of only him-

self: a shadow
spills behind us

like long standing trees
on the first broken

morning of the new year:
he slides a finger inside

my mouth: a forgotten bird-
song droning louder than

our shivering: my tongue
I feel bruising: his fingertip

somehow a softened pit
of fruit: this sugared

nail: my mouth shut
as I look up toward him

in the light: wind
through the trees: wind in

his matted fur: my hair
a forest fire: our faces now

gone—but the taste
of one last chance

to live.

---

 
o. unilateralis s. l.

      Dead ants were found under leaves, attached by their mandibles,
      on the northern side of saplings ~25 cm above the soil. – S. Anderson

You wear your bones outside

your skin / a lifetime of terror

in those ribs / you've been dancing

like a fox diving into hard snow

because hunger hums just there

beyond the body / you feel it

move through you like another

voice pressed to your bare throat /

now follow me the scented ghost

whispers between these trees

still clapping their hands / for you

are the bruised carpenter / my lord

building the last end of his life

as an undone bridge of dry bones

& quqú quqú like severed hooves

fastened to all these wetted arms

in the trees / your neck hanging

from invisible birds caught broken

in midflight / your mouth sealed

to the widest vein found / nearest

to what the body remembers

of those long winter skies / we are

forgiven / when we praise the ghosts

leaving their footprints to follow

in the forest we think summer

burning among the frozen limbs

of these pines / here is home

& here you are / with every fire

cap & spore mushrooming through

you & that thorning head / I touch

after climbing the winded

aspen of this boyhood / an ant

smeared in a dab of sap / you

bored into a clay pot holding

a memory / your taste moving

across my slow fruiting tongue.