Found in Willow Springs 55
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I spit one
seed of the watermelon to the floor
it shakes its six legs & walks
back into the ear of the dead orange cat. You
bark like the son of dogs
living triumph over the corpse
of small lion. What purple
night did you trot out of in your sick
yellow mask? Yellow like a killed
killer wasp, hungry & jaundiced
with abandonment, mutt you bare teeth
sharper than a breadbox stuffed with forks
at night. You smell fear,
a mother over the stroller of a newborn.
When you steal
your first child the blue morning's clean
as a drink from the wrist
of a blonde-haired virgin, her lips softer
than rain pearls on coxcomb.
If you've come out of darkness it must be the past.
A family that tied you to a pole
in the yard-white hiss of grass
to gnaw your own paw
before the rope tore off a crooked tooth.
Now eat what you can little lost coyote,
scavenging railroads
until one day the sweetest
small cry from a window
makes you weak. You smell it, breath
of breast milk, sour clover, pears. Whiff
of love, because you heard it call ......... And when
you lift your snout from the fat bowl
you're wearing a red beard! O mongrel,
no mother can escape the dream of your third eye
the curl of your lip like a politician's
hysterical smile. I lie
to my landlord & say
you don't exist. I feed you crisp apples & you tongue
one long fang dean in a moon yawn.
