Lupa
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Our mother was a wolf she was
drinking from the river the water
flowing into her as if she were
ocean her eyes up from the silver
always watching ears tipped back
which was how she found us
caught by the roots
of a fig tree she plucked us
from the river my brother
in her mouth first
then me not crying not knowing
any reason for fear
only the rough question of her tongue
looking for answers
she became our mother then
and we grew and grew
to be men bigger than most
standing atop two different hills
a hundred black daggers slicing the sky
above me the birds circling above me
they signaled the place to build
and I killed my brother I had to
and only wish I hadn’t washed my hands
in the river the water
remembers so long.
(first appeared in The Journal)
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Fable
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The sun was a peach
held out over snow, the snow
winking at the birds, at the boy
walking with his eyes at the ground,
crunching through the crust,
so focused on nothing
that nothing would have surprised him
more than the wolf
standing ten feet to his left,
wearing a coat like winter itself,
eyes like caves of ice, and the sky,
a sunny dome bit into
by the voracious green tips
of hemlocks and white pine,
so that as the boy looked up
from the snow-packed road
the sky was like the opening
of a dark mouth
and there was no question
about whether or not
he was on the inside.
(first appeared in Cincinnati Review)
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Allergy Song
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Come and I will clear your throat of lilacs,
tease loose the knots of a blossom’s work,
I’ll make a tonic stronger than the pollen
that put you here, propped up at the edge
of the bed, a nectarine shirt tossed over
the lampshade making the whole room glow
orange, as I imagine it might inside a flower,
as if we were bees, you with your book
of hunger, me with my song of hum and pause—
For you I’ll sleep with windows closed
even though the sweet air swims against the glass,
and the cedar whispers the story of before us
and the night bird sings your name, sweet, sweet, sweet—
wife, before I knew you I slept outside
for months at a time and gathered a store of things:
blue fishing twine, a glass jar the color of sky,
a rusted knife handle missing its blade, caribou antler,
bone carvings, a small stone cairn—
and deep in the pages of a tattered journal,
two sprigs of River Beauty,
the blossom’s purple faded slightly, but still fragrant,
a gift, because I love you, I will not share.
(first appeared in Prairie Schooner)