Irrepressible Bitches

 

See my dream of wolves and water—alerted ears inclined—

on edge of Widows’ Creek where we sound for food, maybe
gigawhales with the hiss of the whispered word withered wigglers, 
this way come! They gurgle, flop apart like county carnivals country down

this night—purple orchids drowned in shimmer, motor oil left
behind in cans, and a vagrant’s child bites a fleshy black plum bleeding
jaw sinking hard and cold—you’re a feral dream of home with wolves and water

in elegant pours tuning a wheezing, humble, backwoods
organ in a shed ashore of found water-spouts, propped on old crutches
and door jambs—sixteen Venus fly traps catching every drop after the rain.

My bones, my bones are its carved stops and offer you endless rows 
of violets lazy at morning—butterflies on round dandelions reaching ways 
up to distant mining hills. You play Morning Has Broken in its arms you call father.

We are strong children. We take and we are iridescent. We glut 
when we quaff and we growl, we are educated trash. But we are respected. 
Home, we stand, we travel in our land. Most people think we’re unrestrained.

When you speak to me beneath the breath, tearing flesh
with pointed silence, your calculus seizes all kindness and music, 
for my part I think a crafty distraction and ploy—it is deliberate, what else? 

I know I am decent, and no-one so neglected was so pushed away
here by animal or even the rot around. Speak to me again, my only friend,
hiding, howling, meal wedged inside your teeth,  I will drink. Let’s drink once more.

And you will drink. And I will drink again.
I can’t stop.
The water always delicious, so. Downstream from the taste of you. You say, 

“close your eyes, get some sleep”—then in a dream

I bring you strawberries 
off grape vines used to make cherry wines, 
and you roundly refuse it all—

become the rich loam of the country earth, not to be duped or exploited—