And orchards around my mother’s cabin.
Like a little boy looking for bullet shells
On a battle field at midnight,
I creep through the wood.
Going by the doublewide near the dead stream
I hear him shoo away possums with a sludge
And beagle,
As he did me last fall,
Where you from boy?
My inheritance is behind me and the snow melt
Flow in my leather boots.
I don’t care if she was my neighbor
Or if yer mutha was Mary herself,
Don’t want you here on this plot again.
Coyotes sing to the moon and laugh at their prey.
I picture their teeth sinking in the skin painted red.
Sic’em boy!
I don’t see the sunken log and trip—my face a cold pale shining.
I wander a bit more through the dark thickets
Where the ice around thorns and pines beam at me
Shivering,
Take yer stroll somewhere else.
I can see the cabin’s heater flicker
In front of the loom,
I hear the poppings of his aerosol cans
Thrown in a blazing woodfire.
