One vulture on the ground, 
the deer turned open like a valentine. 
I can’t drive without pulling my throat out. 
The old woman keeps a house full of cats
violent as any southern dog. A deer runs 
across the road like a sheet whipped by wind. 
Just yesterday, two men were swept into the sea 
and it made the news. The farmer painted 
a moon on the side of the barn and still the cows 
are haunch deep in shit. I’m imploring the children 
to agree that sentimentality is not a good thing. 
Give me your bows, the parts of you that make music, 
give me the skin beneath your eyes, 
that which is no longer taut. 
Seven decades ago, there were special sticks for killing 
frogs, my father had two in his back pocket 
the summer Johnny drowned in the ditch. Three decades ago, 
Owen fed my dog all the banana bread with the weed in it. 
We woke up in pee. Two decades ago, someone lifted me 
off the road. In one decade, my husband will be in love 
with another woman. I have an art project where I collect 
the smoothest dicks and enshrine them in verse. 
Our house has too many machetes in the driveway. 
The fog says take off your blouse, show me 
your kneeling knee. The trees have taken flight. 
The girl with the berry cheeks and a snake 
wrapped around her waist grew into the woman 
who brings an empty basket to the dive bar. 
I don’t actually have a husband. I saw a man dragging 
a calf by its back leg, its head bumping through a field 
of chamomile. Ring the bell by the cliff’s edge. 
Every egg carries a speckled eye of blood. 
Imagine life starting as the world cracking, 
not the hot flesh parting. We fished for eel, 
then we grilled the bitter leaves of endive.
There were bioluminescent beings and bonfires 
and dead rabbits that even the hawks couldn’t eat. 
When the cops came everyone sang. You learned young 
that the tender side of men smelled like bread. That the bay 
has a mouth and every mother a boat. That most roadkill 
is found ten feet back behind the soft patches of wild radish. 
That you didn’t want to steal everything; 
it was only that you were good at it.