'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.
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.
