The Elephants

Night Draft

her face is lined now

gorgeous spiral of empty
roads, mouth to nothing
brief redbud, her face
is so lined

unsleeping crow-song,
brow muddled hard

pawing the earth-flesh
who finds years of dirt
now her face is lined

her phone brightens with
want. her own face
has brightened
and brightened

rain shines and unshines
in that open circle
of streetlamp

a blizzard dazzles the acre
then goes

wet straw leaves itself
in the bent selves
of grasses

and her face is lined

and a mottled dog
whimpers. its small body
a log of longing, its eyes
deep fruit darkened
past ripeness

and her face is lined

and dark-gold pennies
find their corners
to settle. even in houses
of the poor

---

If You Knew How I Wanted You I Would Lose You

End of the heat months.

You roll white papers in your thick
fingers.

Instead of sleep I will go to the room
of hungers

which bite tails and yell.

Past's dust
sets in the grooves of the self and alters.

What lives in the pit of the lake,
black mirror.

Outside the house
they trade cruelty for cruelty.

To be awake,
sad animal in the eyes,

cracks. Million looks
out from the cut

body. All the nails are bitten.
All the apples

bitten. Lizards move their white
sunless bodies.

Without you it will be
like the house of the last moment

when no one is watching.

House of the brink of death,
everyone gone.

With you I am without
attributes.

I want to apprentice myself to something,
but only longing has posts.

I want to open the door, but it is open.

---

As a Failure I Came to the Prairie

With a faulty engine I drove a dun truck
Past a faltered town’s houses gone empty.
Hours whistled with distance. Leaves wrecked
Their red-violet and gold.
On unnamed grass stretches
Cows watched their long private dusk.
Most of the prairie was
Gone.
Stripped to farmland in the days of dust.
Then I found the prairie’s real mouth.
Shoulder-high
Bare breakable grasses.
Eyes were stars
Shook too hard.
Jade grass shot through: mandarin,
Rust.
I walked so far into the prairie I could not see the
Truck. I walked into the prairie when I did not belong
To myself. I’d stopped being real when I was
Alone.
Buffalo shit, two weeks old, hardened.
Prairie.
Darkblond grasses and some smudge
Of purple.
  Old fences, rain-lightened,
Bordered the prairie.
A two-lane highway ran through
Where the prairie remained and was
Gone.
Where machines rocked and rutted
The earth.
West on the thin road into spectacular
Flame.
And then dusk blue-caught the grasses
And night curled over the straggled yards

And now I lived here where I didn’t belong. I thought
About cold and its names. Being wracked,
Huddled and stalled.
One October I came to the prairie
And its absence.
An acre
Surrounded the house.
Dust hovered and shook
In sunlight.
Eyes widened
In awe.
This tree nameless
Flared deep as the bones
Of rust.
Leaves were crimson flails
Where the prairie was gone. The
Rooster rushed the coop-door, eyes
Wild.
I came to the prairie and knew
No one. The prairie was mostly
Gone except for where you could
Walk. The prairie kept inhuman
Looking.
I failed myself then I came to the
Prairie.
It made sense to go where I did not
Matter.
Where the prairie and clear stars made careless
Dialogues. I came to the prairie in Missouri,
Which means They-Who-Have-Dugout-
Canoes. In a language no one now
Speaks.
I came to the prairie as a once-built
Cabinet called person that sagged open when
No one was looking.
But I was
Alive.
Last season the air steeped in
Heat and limp fireflies and then
Fall came sharpening and glaring and
Rained on stunned trees.

---

tear down the architecture, tear it /

tear it & down with the stubborn columns

burr & red spine of the flower: burr
& grate: teeth of the lizard: flower

teeth: I live in the south which is
not mine to tear down: I live in a half-

white body whose long arms are mine

to cast dramatically about: or is

anything I tear down mine to tear
down: or is everything torn-down

mine, burr & red spine of the lizard

flower: I am a lazy girl who won’t learn
the names of the fruits:

what my father worked for to give me
I dream about giving away