1.
I nurture the wrong people,
gangrene girls with color scars,
small breasts like the yellow cusps of dandolion.
I have broken so many fights
the count is beyond fingers,
beyond toes.
2.
We walk the stone paths of the zookery.
Ivy, oat, barley. Great frogs, green shade,
wood ducks, a rock ledge.
Water lillies like thick fish, spotted fish,
striped fish turning delicate hoops.
We eat lunch on stone benches jutting out over water,
a breeze ghosting through spiked grass.
Swifts move through air like Chinese fighting kites
and there by the fallen tree, an egret,
wings strong as hunger,
wings strong as selfishness.
3.
My girls do not see the wood duck, the swift.
they do not see the fish, the large frogs.
My girls complain about the walking,
this was a trip to the zoo,
we came to see animals
not Lake Michigan,
not the break wall,
not a rumble of rock blocking waves,
the water green gray blue,
not shells, not algae,
not sand thick with alewives.
3.
I nurture caged girls,
meat eating girls,
and when the rock dove lands by thrown bread,
I nurture girls who glory in the herring gull\'s attack,
a rock dove retreating quickly,
wild wings sparking like fields of lasers.
|
