Love, or Grieving a Beast

In the heat, on the hardwood floor, I lay        naked with an electric fan blowing hair in my mouth                and my wolfdog drooling on my thigh.

She has bitten my father        and I am proud because he deserved it. Tomorrow,                my parents will put her down—notice how

language grows vague as it approaches        murder, but I am a child in America in the time of the Great                Pretending, and this is love despite the horror that is

explaining horror. I am in the woods because I am running away.        I am on a raft on the Mississippi river                because it is stronger than guns. The river dampens denim

to a deeper blue. The river killed Jeff Buckley        but it didn't mean it. In an abandoned church I burn,                but can't abandon,

a Bible. I scavenge the pages, read it        time. A book of leaves. A house                on a hill where the bones of a beast

rise up when it rains. I like taxidermy        because I don't like burying bodies. At the bar                of dead deer, I'm finally ready for love.

Love plays me at pool, scratches the cue ball,        and it's nothing like poisoning                a pet on a clean silver table and everything

like a hand out a car window. I am a child in America        and allowed in bars because no one here can separate liquor                from a miracle, am allowed

in cars because no one here can separate growing up        from driving away. I drive away in the key of Bb minor                which, in 1682, the composer

Marc-Antoine Charpentier described as        obscure and terrible. Love rings rude.                A crude palm of pennies, loose tobacco, and keys,

America is not my kingdom, but the dirty snow        where I find you looking so fine, just like that,                holding an animal you won't kill.