THE DAMAGE DONE
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.
WHITE RABBIT
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.