Now into the chicken coop comes a sea
To soak the hay To float the Araucanas
down to Clifta Creek Into the skull of the buck
a face of caves swinging from a pine
Now into beetle husks inside dead trees
the trees we haven’t seen in groves
for years Now into cobalt bromide bottles
slid onto the ends of stripped branches
Into the bones of pups shot and edged
over the cliff every spring and fall the bitches
bred by the smell of their heats Now
into the crossbow Into the fletched arrows
Into the Chinese assault rifle bought for 99 dollars
Huntsville spinning Now into the plastic
cup my seed Inside her ready the egg
This poem first appeared in Issue 22, Vol. 1, 1996.
Cynthia King is the author of Sailing Home (Putnam, 1982), Beggars & Choosers (Viking, 1980), The Year of Mr. Nobody (Harper & Row, 1978), In The Morning of Time (Four Winds Press, 1970).
