tight,
a shudder in air, stone-faced, just
as they began to soar a great distance.
Lost to myself I think on them,
how the rich dung intrudes
into nearby towns,
where the thick smells waft, come down.
Who Do You Say I Am
To the pissed-off colleague
I look like the cat that ate the canary,
whereas the panhandler
outside Home Depot says
I look like Drew Carey,
so I ask him for my dollar back.
The same week a drive-thru
worker swears I look exactly
like that guy who plays for the Packers,
and I remember how years ago,
an older, hairier teen cornered me
after football practice to say
You know, you’re one ugly motherfucker.
But who can really say? At the airport,
the lead vocalist for an R&B group
mistook me for the singer
of another R&B group and O
how I wanted to take her backstage.
Even the cloudless sky is blue
with longing. I remember
one time a neighbor-farmer
thought out loud I might be funny,
so dad put me to work
with the hogs and I watched
from the trees as he called for me
through outbuildings and barn,
his anger on my name.
Built anxious, I feared legion
in the swine, spooked at the sound
of shades on the stair,
had not yet learned to thrill
in becoming stranger, more
distant from myself.
Record of Persons Whose Names Have Changed
From an exhibit of eighteenth-century documents at the public library, Chelmsford, Mass.
All is vanity. The man who changed Bumside
to Burnside, afraid of himself, the protuberance of it,
hanging there for whoever
might use it to demean him or make dirty. In such cases,
the rubbed-out letters
shelter and shield, Lorenzo
rechristened Larry, in the daybreak
of state function:
Be it enacted, &c., as follows . . .
The magic is immediate. The new name a sandpaper
smoothing away bumps
and unsightly knobs—a flatline of your former self.
For others, before and after pictures
show no perceptible change, no clearing away of trees
or rocks from the rich, black soil. As in the case
of Micajah, who strangely
insisted on Morrill. What neighbor haunted him?
What hope of safety? What millstone
kept him just out of reach of the surface, that intoxication
of air that comes
from standing aloof, unknown, amid the rabble?
With My Father, Cutting Pigs
Finally I learn to hold, raise
the small one
head-down, hock-spread,
to stretch flat the skin,
my hands raw around
the bristled hooves.
Bending low, my father
makes two quick cuts, kneads
the skin to surface them.
With enough practice I turn
the pig quick so my father
can scissor the tail.
As the squealing fades
into a burst of grunts,
I hold out to him the next.
When Matt’s Dad Lost His Hand
We comforted Matt on the school bus—Does he have a fake one now?
Then somebody made fun of Bunny Lip, aka Leon
Stinks, aka Stutter Step, and he boxed wild as the bus
turned from blacktop roads to gravel, past scraping
harvesters, the eaten fields, dropping us off one by one. We trudged
the lane to the house, heads bowed looking for rocks
to throw at sparrows on the fence line. Everything tensed
when we appeared, angered by hunger, lowing with milk.
Menagerie Wish List
If I
