A Poem: Kitsune

For Brigid, who lives in many places

Remember the burrow and your blind brothers
the day your slate gray eyes and ear canals opened
there were warm bodies around you, all fighting for the teat
all aware of the darkness and the mess, the way food spoiled on
the ground and the rumor light and snow.

One day when your nose was caked with the blood
of weak sibling, you realize why they break you open. Not just to feed
on you to make room for the strong but to be reborn. The others
are too small to understand but you know that someday
you will be broken open too, that a hand will reach into your body
and give you magic.

The burrow opens and you take your first cautious steps. The others,
whose rumps you’ve nipped, follow meekly behind, are also stunned
by the crisp scent of grass and unripe berries, the dung of a raccoon,
the body of a bisected mouse, the fungus sprouting on the edge
of the woods, in the shadow of a pine, where a circle of snow,
has been casually dropped…

like undergarments cast off before jumping into a pond
a backpack thrown behind the kitchen door
a girl fallen off her sled after it has struck the fence and her
life has begun to seep into the snow, drawing you closer
as your eyes shift from gray to amber and you remember
that you were the first to taste flesh, the first to forage,
the first to hear the crying and understand what it meant.

A Poem: The U

In another universe my son tells me to go screw myself
I throw a drinking glass at him and my wife
Doesn’t do anything because she left three months
Earlier and doesn’t give a crap if we kill each other.

In another universe my son gets a college scholarship
Because he wrote an essay about his father and
His mother and how they taught him to value
Kindness over intelligence.

In another universe I am an actor, walking on a
Famous stage playing a teacher and knowing
That if I stand just this way and tilt my head just that
Way that people will cry.

In another universe I am a teacher, acting in
Front a class and knowing that if I break down
The idea of the maple tree and show
Them where to drive in the tap, that they too

May slide from one world to another, fight
Parents and not get hurt, learn that families
Are the best education, and know that the spotlight
Is both a blessing and a curse.

A Poem: Vines

I wrote this when I was teaching at the Darrow School in New Lebanon, New York. Under thirty and new to the classroom, I had a lot of enthusiasm and quite a few reservations. This shape poem expresses some of them.