Dawn Pendergast
Hi mouse.
I don't deny you, nor do you fit into my thinking about things right now. This is the real world. Your name was Tenney. I did not tend to you as I should have. It was night and I threw you into the garbage behind my house. I know I should have buried you. In a basket adorned with bread and flowers, then raised you and laid your white body down. It is confusing. My friends rarely visit anymore. My remembering sees you and your little white body. I think of you as some sort of facet of my life, a doornob or a little white vase holding the flowers of your death. It is dark at night and things move around me.
The Even
We.
Sit, laying our hands like wire.
On the table.
Wood of the moon
to touch your head.
* * *
The moon looks good on the table.
It is a holster.
You are holding it.
Your head is balled on your elbows.
And screwed through your hands.
* * *
The sun is put into a yellow edge.
They bring breads’ smelling
so forth, the table that is a fold
with two plates.
And the moon, the rust.
The rust of waited on
talk.
* * *
Your head.
And hands.
In the position of finding out
so to speak.
“We are eaters”
They bring on
pink shanks and spinach
artichokes and then
creme
* * *
Bitter Dogbane at dusk.
Apo, meaning “away from.”
Some of the time
wind is it, filling the rows,
of rows of pink and white.
In drifts shadows on
the chaparral.
I push my hand on you
and my other one.
* * *
No, on.
The sight of us going
underneath the road
The bats. Before anything
it sounds a lot,
remote flipping.
bugs
the shield bugs
the jesus bugs the bugs
that come from
toilet paper
dispensers
bugs I get
them the bugs on my face
the black heads
of bugs I face
come and get it this
dinner
the silent bugs the ones
that get awards
bugs on bats
maggots that
eat gangrene the bugs
that copulate on
the dirty mattress
on the porch the bug
to which I say you
suckers bugs that want
to wear rings on my bed
my desk, tennis
court bugs one on phoebe,
Anna, Georgia, Wendell
bugs what-ing on
the ducks I love
the feel of one
in my throat
god save them
sum of them
but keep them
at bee and at bay
at home on
the holster.
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Dawn Pendergast's own website is what birds give up
