COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG ANNOUNCES HIS RETIREMENT

“I am human therefore nothing human is alien to me.”—The Self-Tormentor, Terence

hum is reef
man is no more a moor to tie
a gale to

anymore i am lien to fog
i am fig-intimate
no hinge to hem

no hail to not ignore
no grief i fail to note
no goat ignoring horn

or horn ignoring fame
of another
name

the fang is not alien to me
nor the fog
nor the fume of time’s mourning

no more — no more
life of no resting
no more fear for muriel

mourning is not all human
nor home all human — no more
groan torn from throat — no more one hum:

hum is reef
i am floating on its
great gait as figment

i am all fruit tree
i am true truth that
nothing is ever all gone.

Major Arcana 1: Randy (Plainfield, VT)

in meadows, a woman can look like a girl: wrinkled pockets,

a pendant upheld & backlit by her last year’s close calls.

from here on out it’s all about divination & liking blankets

that make noises (Randy, there’s a sound for you reaching).

from here on out it’s all about that ancillary pain & her wrists’ slow-slightening

diameter. how she can be afraid of the dark too &

what’s inside it (your life like a picture that didn’t turn out).

how she saw a cloud in a baby (its head a pale onion) & not vice versa.

& what would you ask her? how she wound up in chamomile country,

(softening its clay-covered shoulders) ready for her outlaw? why she wears that same

dust-colored dress & fancies the birds’ more circular

prophecies (as they bracelet the tree line). or would you ask of your own

lost causes (no yes or no answers) with their fine-toothed

& ceaseless scratching? where all her life she’s believed in the rings of trees

& the sadness of house-flowers, the jagged scrawl

of grocery-list-penmanship (to feed you). where all her life she’s made the wind chime

(without glass) & waited for some touch (some perfect touch)

to feed her.

Major Arcana 2: The Instruments

oxymel jarred
some filament floats,
some petals press down
in a hue like fresh-welt

angostura & apple &
daisy chain of wantless stems
the ultimate hedgewitch,
the right side of chiaroscuro

her measurement murmur
her boiled wings
the blessed uses take the hawk

wing and strip it
that awful thrashing gives way
grind a fine dust for pale
silicon sheath for
the light-left eyes

take the sourceless light and marry
to pretty clusters of concrete-weeds:
tiny elbows of wanting

give me a drink & i’ll drink it
heave off last trespass
pepper lung and harden water
new body new body new body

weft and warp thread
thread story to prediction
to heartache to cure

power no more
than a thumb-traced raincoat
no pre-caught hawk
no silent ask

the truth of snared bodies is always
toes touch to mouth touch to memories of
breath: the body a thing
the body a tense
the body a prayer
of its own making