Trigger

That night we started kissing and I felt
something, a dark punch below the ribs.

And though your body was longer
and heavier than his body

and the town was different and the state
was different, and the house was different,

my body was still the same body,
and my brain was the same brain

and though I had straightened my hair,
it was still the same hair.

I said Stop. I need to know this is you.
You rolled away from me,

took a book from the stack by your bed.
I do not remember what poem you read

(though it had nothing to do with love).
Your deep voice washed through me and brought

me back to this body, this room,
these frail lace curtains knotted over the black windows.

Before I Left Oregon

The man I’d been seeing asked me to go
for a walk with him and his daughter.
I had no idea he would leave us

in his mother’s empty yard while he went to see
a friend I’d never heard of. We found a bird,
dead by the side of the house. His daughter

wanted to hold it, to see if it was still warm,
if it had broken its skull or died of cold.
Instead, I scooped it into a trowel I found

on the front porch, scraped a grave
in the back garden’s frozen loam,
too shallow for even this tiny bird.

When I asked if she wanted a funeral
the girl said she only wanted to remember
the curve of the beak and the color of the wings.

I dropped wet brown leaves over the bird’s body,
hoping her grandmother, when readying her garden
for spring, would not stick her hands into this rot.

Leave a Reply