THE DAMAGE DONE

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My throat has been host to a sparrow

I want a shrike to spear. My bones,

Have rusted shut, like the gate of a house,

once great, now sunken by reckless disgrace.

 

I have arrived ten years too late, to find

I’ve been sentenced to the shape of my skull.

And my face, I see as a surgeon does;

A warring nation of city states.

 

Was I scratched or was I bitten? I feel

The best part of me is vestigial.

I will have to work between heartbeats

But here, I will finally become lean.

 

I was poisoned each day for a decade

And it left me heavy with bad metals.

More than all the nickel in all the coins

Ever swallowed, or lost in a backseat.

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WHITE RABBIT

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I’m trying to think which deaths I deserved,

Sitting in shotgun while a stranger drives,

Over double lines, onto the wrong side.

Neck set in the cut-throat angle. Absurd,

This first prayer in six years. He takes the curve,

Like it owes him, going faster than sight,

Seeing death reforming in the headlights,

To a rabbit, albino white.           We swerve.

Final prayer before I hit the windshield;

God, when I die, let me be born again,

To a family with guns and good eyes.

Dear God, if all you give me is a field,

I will rehearse on the scarecrow and then,

Help you clear the devil’s ranks, one more time.