Sometimes I Wish We Were a Beagle

Sometimes I Wish We Were a Beagle

Sometimes I Wish We Were a Beagle

for Sonny
        
If I was in love with you for no reason,
I would die in the road waiting for you
 
to scratch my head before school. I would have
 
           too many tapeworms. So many
you could scratch their heads.
 
So many they would help you
 
on the bus because of all your crying.
 A witness sees inside & says aloud.
 
If I was in love with you for one reason,
 
it would be the way you carry your cage
  around. You look like a loaf of bread
 
with a life knifed into it. If I was in love
 
with you for money, I wouldn’t be me,
           now would I? I would
 
be a hairy train—you could hear me
 
   crying all the way to heaven.
      You could hear me dying
 
all the way to loving how you let me
 
 slobber on your face
like a decent sacrifice.

Meanwhile on the Moon

Over Mare Imbrium basin,
birds are bland, diamonds
with boiled wings, bullet
 
holes valued higher than our very
breath. Even here the downpours
come to party, leave with empty
 
lungs. We bob for bloodshot
eyes in buckets of buttermilk,
these our current incarnations.
 
Every year the fragments of worship
from centuries before finally arrive,
full of soft light, wave admiration.
 
We feed the world these words
& take the forms of frightened
horses like a dark glitch, drain
 
your language of love & leave
our bodies long enough to lick
your sightless lives once more.