Two people who are honest
for the first time speak
honestly to each other.
There are flocks of sheep
herding dogs inside me.
There are lovers I’ve pared
with knives from apples.
This season smutted
into two others
until the body could have
what the body shouldn’t have.
In a winter’s rain I became
one part driven to fleas
and mange, teeth,
the other part left foaming over.
The sky then pink
as the underside of my tongue.
Pink as the skin beneath
the dead fox’s fur. I’ve firmly
resolved to amend my life
but I keep breaking
my teeth on these rocks.
Jacques J. Rancourt is currently a Wallace Stegner Poetry Fellow at Stanford University. His poems have appeared or will appear in New England Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Colorado Review, Narrative, and Indiana Review, among others. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the recipient of a 2011-2012 Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and a 2012 work-study scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. He lives in Oakland, California.
