with thanks to Vievee Francis
I tried to lose it — the mouth
in me. A Texas of hunger:
here, the drying crabgrass,
the spittle of burrs, blood
of snagged ankles, the mute
slither of creeks. What of this world
is left to want? Everywhere I look,
a hide. The everything the deer
did not want to leave, and
the no one it could tell.
In the oaks drawn over the hills,
you could walk the museum
of their daylong shadow.
The red dirt by the hoof
next to the Shiner bottle.
I have no ode, no eclogue, or elegy.
I feel unsafe inside myself. It is
the only place I can be.
