Thursday, December 19, 2013

Poem: Litter


First published in Iodine Poetry Journal, Charlotte, North Carolina


Litter

Kinetically armatured to the
greater world, I am all-fire,
I am beasthood, I am gravenous.

The first chapter of an epic involves
lostliness, desperado, great moons of
pain and devastation.
You couldn’t write a blues
song without it.

But even Caravaggios have
daubs of light, even
ghost towns have sheltered
corners where feral labradors give birth.

Her pups wander into the
street and are picked off by tourists,
drizzled with ooh and ah,
taken home and given frontier
names like Pistol and Cody.
Mother stands at the crest of the hill,
breathing the last grains of scent as
her runt grows smaller in a
station wagon window.

She paws the ground.
Goes to the stream for a drink.
Smells a rabbit.
The epic begins.



 From the collection Fields of Satchmo

Photo by MJV

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