Anonymancer
The bear will bite a second time,
so don’t. The tension between
what my body knows and what
it doesn’t could tune a guitar,
but I won’t find one here. Just bleed
for a little while, then creak on up.
//
I’ll talk to myself, no shame.
The crows won’t care until
I’m quiet. Maybe we can
trade tips on tools, I’ll flash
a few spirituals while they
klaxon over the carrion.
Every night, there is an incremental
increase in scuttling. Tiny talons
will soon scratch through
the sky, the wall, the bedroll.
//
Been buried before, near five feet
on Spring break. No mysteries, no
loss of power, no instructions, just wind
supplanting the sidewalk biome’s roar.
Out here I lack any real sense
of Bauhaus, though the lighthouse
gets close. Concrete columns were my
contingency plan: find the nearest
multi-story Federal prison
and stock the hive.
//
Never have I felt so compelled
to think ahead. Tomorrow’s weather
is a buffet, today I pass time with
wet wood and a failure to spark.
I am grateful for the glass
that splits the blizzard’s lip.
Where do wolves huddle
on a fresh paper day like this.
I read that squirrels forget
where forty percent of their
acorns are interred, then I drop
the book into the fire.
//
I stunned a rabbit
then broke its neck
to eat. It’s automatic, so
I must’ve killed before,
but the calorie count
doesn’t satisfy. On the tundra
there are no fresh towels,
and the point of days is lost.
This is likely my last
cup of tea, I know it.
How long will I
taste the leaves.
//
Are all these frozen corpses my own?
A tumble off the withered tracks
sets my sewing back a few years.
I leave a tart pillow in every icehouse.
My step-grandpa’s assortment
of hunting-themed groaners
makes more sense with each deer
I drop, which is the most
terrifying revelation.
//
Despite the disarray I’m the first tenant.
I find half-strewn closets and
unmade beds, worn leather boots
that have never gouged the snow,
stitched for me to tear apart.
Every stale granola bar rode
a foggy conveyor belt. I think
I’m alone now, but to tailor loneliness
you must have someone to long for.
It’s clearing up, feathers quietly
plummet all around.
//
There will be no single, defining event.
Each surging storm serves as a Black
Friday metaphor until the market crushes
the equator. We know now that the alpha
wolf is bullshit, but who can say what
kind of leaf litter whiteouts may muscle in.
Our soccer stadium world where
every gate runneth over with rotting
soda cups, the last holdouts of print.
//
Cascading waves from the ribboned
arctic sky will warp all canids
into shock troops. I am always alone
as my scent slithers up their noses.
This, contrary to a contemporary
understanding of wild wolves, who
let humans lie. I mean, lock up
your sheep, but then again,
in England the cows went mad
from eating cow brains sloshed
down the trough. Pink slurry
is easier to legally bleach.
//
The first human to live to
one-hundred-and-fifty has
already been born, and I long
for an age when we are no longer prey.
Here the lights only flicker when
an aurora smears the stars, I’m left
lapping oil for my aching lantern.
It’s not clear if anyone else is alive,
I only see my own feet in the snow.
There’s a century of trout for feasting
but the books are blank and blurry.
//
There will be nothing left of me but
fish ribs, frozen holes, abandoned cabins
reupholstered after every update.
For two hundred days the sun’s length
goes uncut, I notice this while reading
my food diary and journal of sprains,
stats that will never be spoken. Am I
surviving strictly for the sunsets,
or just a stubborn raspberry
to the black crows
and the brown bears.
//
Even when radios giggle with
a noisy wave, it’s clear I’ll never
host the wider world again.
Even as all energy has evaporated
I have to assume other authors wail on.
I’m the one who pressed start
on this purgatory of ice,
sumptuous hips, and the meandering
boil of water like a lifetime supervising
my callouses as they collapse
their own skin castles over
and over for no reason other than
we had the capital.
//
My dreams billow over whale bones,
diced clouds ground against the ocean,
that rumble so hungry for me and I’m
inclined to oblige. For security’s sake
I bunk at the dam now, hammering bolts
into lures to waggle under the ice. Ice
was the river all this time, the border
between me and the last death I can’t
bear to embrace. Every day I dream
about uninstallation, the buckle of net
neutrality that will send my save to
the sky, clipped from synchronization,
a string I trim to hold.
//
As this whiteout ingests me,
I daydream of dinosaurs, that they
sprouted feathers all along,
they stepped pretty for the bayou
before any beads fell.
The first nations had it right with
gliding snakes in radiant robes.
As I am fitted for my last linen,
white meters plummet and the screen
excavates rich, untouched mantle,
churning free from light. I could cheat
again but immortality is for the crows,
may they carry my meat to the sky and
drop it to crack the frost. Those birds
never snowboard the rooftops here,
which is reason enough
to abandon a valley.
