Ode to the small shit
The moon gets a glass of milk
before sleep. A PBJ
for the woods I own according to the state
but not the Navajo. When these offerings
are gone in the morning, ants
are busy anyway, gathering what I can’t see.
Because of these smaller harvests, I understand
that the woman who hides under her hair
in class keeps a lamp in there, a desk,
is busy writing letters with her left hand
to her right. A closer look
is called for, at the sun, at the dream
of my wife’s in which everyone dies,
except there she is, at the end of the dream,
alive. What a rope her life is
into the dream, allowing the dead people
to climb out, to wake and brush
a little harder, to look
at a walking stick on the window
and finally wonder, how could you possibly
have a stomach? This is autobiographical
to the extent these are my hands
I am watching type, these are my hands
I am watching type, but essentially, dust
is the community I’m a citizen of. Sentences
aren’t supposed to end that way
according to some people I know
I’d love to see drunk and ecstatic
over the moon or clouds or this wrinkle
in 18th century Peruvian literature
they’ve always wanted to tell someone about
but couldn’t, because how embarrassing: to notice,
to care. But the ants notice, the ants care
so much, they carry their dead home
and chop them up and eat them
so they’re not dead anymore, and shouldn’t I love you
enough to do the same?
