Thursday, October 3, 2013

from With a Ravenous Spike by Beckian Fritz Goldberg

Do you know, even if it is trying to make me kill myself with vitamin D deficiency, I love this time of year. I take what I get. I wanna wear my cutoffs one last time before it gets cold. I was looking through old posts in this blog and I think you could play a drinking game in which you take a shot for every instance wherein I mention cutoffs, running alone, doing laundry, being 26, or where I used a run-on sentence. And at the end you die This poem keeps coming to me in the early fall morning when I'm getting ready, making coffee in the kitchen. The day begins with what we've left behind.


...this hunter’s hour—a parity of coolness 
and hand, dream and ear. Coyote, I return 
to my only true subject in light 
of desert autumn; no amount of road or house 
or urban sprawling drives me out. Though long-winged 
memory pursues me: the chick responds to the shadow 
of a hawk even before it’s out of the shell. And in my bed 
the fever’s passing made me wonder if daily a secret combustible 
need makes a man quieter, more polite, more 
carefully correct, lest he flame— 
We are what eats us. Coyote. 
The dog-star’s fading, and the only woman-star 
I can name is a burning princess once 
fed to the jaws of a serpent. 
A story before you sleep. From that dark cave 
poked in the mountain the city is only haze, glint. 
The day begins with what 
we’ve left behind. Oh, slowly, I get to my eyes, 
face, mouth, shirt, stunned kitchen. 

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