We beat wings. We
fly rings. We

scorn Yeats. 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

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,

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.

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-…