house of the animal entrances
mice come in
ants come in
spiders come in
songbirds come in
fleas come in
squirrels come in
deer come in
snakes come in
flies come in
slugs come in
hawks come in
coyote come in
nematodes come in
foxes come in
fungi come in
quail come in
mosses come in
wolf come in
grasses come in
mosquitos come in
trees come in
lichen come in
rushes come in
cougar come in
beetles come in
raccoons come in
flowers come in
forbs come in
frogs come in
worms come in
before we die we burn
We begin to appear to ourselves as inhabitants of another system, talking in unison, not over and under one another, not sure we will be heard beyond the crackle of our opening, making many acquaintances by touch and mutual crowding. Longing is what it feels to be doused with useful knowledge. In the force of becoming our own fossils, we’re lucky if we make the sought-after connections in our own trash archives while our cells compress into a sandwich we can never swallow. Time slows and the record fades and finally nothing. We’ve burned all the pure products, we’ve read all the poems about trash that, before we all die, must be written.
