Litter

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.

Iodine Poetry Journal

Charlotte, North Carolina

from the collection Fields of Satchmo