bone – other animals

where the skin grows thin a sharp moon pokes through bare branches

(First published in Heliosparrow.)

This bullet is for you he said and poured another drink. Of course when the robots take over no one will notice. Har har gulp. But should I really tell you about the feeling that came over me one day vast as the sky while I watched insects swarm a red mass of hair and bone by the side of the road. If only. The day was hot and he had just been forcibly removed from office so we thought we’d throw a little party. Little did we know that her speech would sour the whole thing and make each of us long for the home we would never see again tucked into the side of a mountain where dogwood blooms and that little pond with so many frogs in spring. But that’s the way it goes. When they bring it out you try to eat with a smile.

some cloudy mornings it’s the feel of the favorite pen in your hand you charge off not caring about a cracked phone screen the band-aid covering bone the stomp of the neighbor through the ceiling hope and calm caught in little chunks we string together to make a necklace though perhaps even that was a way to dig down to the level of the excavation you needed to see with its as yet untranslated script and inscrutable editorial cartoons which they say

the flowers this year will be late and unequivocal

thin moon

the bone

in a corset

evening cool:
the dog finds
his favorite bone