We buried the kids but the cops dug them up
cops dug them up, cops dug them up,

which is the snake
that feeds then starves us,

Why’d he do it? we asked. But we know why.

We beat wings.  We
fly rings.  We

 

It's raining women here in Cincinnati.
Parts of women, parts of one woman—
the police aren't really sure. Last week

Between my back fence and the drainage ditch,
the county’s
                             no-man’s land, I’d

In the rose and pale gold of
                                                             declining light
I brace my stiff feet on dry leaves, and grasp

Though reverence may not save us
we must carry ourselves
with reverence.

Grandmomma plucked pin-feathers. I stared
into the cavity and tried
to imagine such jumbled, meaty things

I heaved my thick world history book
above my classmates’ heads. It arced,
flapped open, boomed against the blackboard.

My Daddy slapped my hand against my cheek.
“Don’t hit yourself. Why are you hitting yourself?”
He held my wrists, and laughed. I cried. My hands,

As we stood by the casket, Momma gasped,
through tears, “Look hard! You must remember her!”
I looked hard, tried to memorize the slight
malicious curl of her thin lips—too red—

“I’m looking forward to my death,” she said.
I sat upright. I watched her blond hair sway,
this college girl who taught our Sunday School.

The tail, held back along the spine, keeps them
—most times—from kicking you. I don’t know why.

Mostly my nightmares are dull. My ex-wife yells
and I yell back. The cat bolts out the door
and bites the neighbor’s child. Or else

I first saw my future wife drinking a beer on the porch at Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs. A common friend had told me Erin would be there and had gently nudged us toward each other, though she’d warned me Erin was a California-…