was it that / that glance / backward

downward / so evidently / an afterthought   

the body / enacting / its relentless

The raccoon got up on the roof and wouldn’t come down. I threw rocks 
at it and it danced between them. Finally I decided to get my shotgun.
I got a ladder from the garage and climbed up on it. Then I took aim and

after Pamela Argentieri’s “Continued Persistence”
O arm that spurts flowers,
Branch giving birth to water.
O tree that bows down

Scribbled on the expansive mist, the desire
of many dwindles to us
and our “activities,” wholesome

The room is dying honey and lemon rind.

Her breath swung open like a broken shell:

Mother fingers in the mud. Mother begging bowl.

Within 電 a field poetics:
sky, rain, lightning over la milpa—
components in the symbol

I saw the crow first, on the shoulder turned 
to mud, then its shadow, then the cage
of bone arcing up from the muck. January 

The line, its sleek ark. Stow the creatures where the calendar
can’t snatch them. Coal is unreasonable in all its phases.
Into the open pearls, I was, at first, sure I’d read. The coasts of it,