The Bread We Eat in Dreams

are gone.

When I kissed her

she tasted like change,

like the face of the moon

suddenly showing her dark.

I did not notice.

Still yet in the chicken yard,

thinking it mattered,

that it would bother her,

I curdled the milk and ruined the beer,

unspun the wool and frightened the cows,

crowing at my body’s breadth—

while she, oil-grimed, skull shaved,

quietly built red engines

to carry herself off.

My hands in her hair,

I looked up in the smoky night,

to a red thing in the sky,

and began to break along the seams,

to fold and arc like a steel cockerel

straining at the sun,

to sear into a thing

that might match her;

not gentle, not bred,

a thing which might taste

of orange domes like bodies rising,

of pilgrim blood both savage

and serene.

The Wolves of Brooklyn

It was snowing when the wolves first came, loping down Flatbush Ave, lithe and fast, panting clouds, their paws landing with a soft, heavy sound like bombs falling somewhere far away. Everyone saw them. Everyone will tell you about it, even if they were in Pittsburgh that weekend. Even if they slept through it. Even if their mothers called up on Monday and asked what in the world was going on out there in that Babylon they chose to live in. No, the collective everyone looked out of their walk-up windows the moment they came and saw those long shapes, their fur frosted and tinkling, streaming up the sidewalks like a flood, like a wave, and the foam had teeth.