Flesh-backed quotas of radiant pin cherries.
I give it all away when I cross the border.
A loon on the money. Nothing left to do
but build and inculcate my fantastical
atoms, unable to catch a break. Little
lake, how’d I ever end up on the other
side of the mileage from you? Back in
the day I had other forests, other names:
Bitch Lichen and Loon Child and Heresy
She-Who-Sets-The-Water-Table, Most
Resilient Weed, Tax Free Tamarack,
and Jacqueline Pine—The Hopeful.
A false form of bracket fungi, an inflamed
saccharine ache spreading through vernal
pools, the kind of turncoat solitude born
by the shoals with a heart full of potholes.
If I’d had the means or time, if I’d written it how
I’d wanted they’d have accused me of lying,
or worse—that I don’t know how to have
a good time, and truly I couldn’t give a shit
about Longfellow or the long shadow of his
‘noble savage’ that fell from my mother’s
mouth and draped over me at the age
of seven and I’m telling you that I’ve done
the better of it than just twisting myself
inside some dead man’s mouth, feeling
for a reliable tongue. I simply need
to be done with this so that I can receive
other messages—from my own dead
who walk behind me.
