Saving up for the big time

What are you doing winking? In the middle of such atrocities? Peices of film on the floor, torn bird wings on the school stoop. You use the leash like a compass. Say: can a person love four people at once? It is more interesting to say yes, swivel our heads to the sky and just look--two deer up there in little winter coats, holes for horns and spindly legs.

Do you like my dialogic self? Is it this shadow I have, that you want me wrapped in fur turning circles on the second story? It's too cold for such things. Terribly seething I am, banging my elbows against this booth and looking outward all the time now, not at all kindly or brave.

To move back home for us both, it's in my mouth like cornbread. Blue willows. The disappearing deer beside my childhood bed. I go back to my Georgia head, the arms my arms became at night, tiny switches on the mantle just above the fireplace, a cabinet full of pictures, mom on the couch with dog.

Or tottling through newer cities than this, to begin simply with a spell in the dog's mouth. I can critically veer through the trees, boy. Shore you like one of those old boats in the grass. Patch you with velvet, cotton, donning the eyes of the copperhead that crawled under the dock. Did I tell you about the eyes? Alive a windstorms, flecks of red from whatever it rolled over.