following distance

in the pineforest tonight I find
the antlers of a stag maybe left
by some hunter to collect later I drag them
further into the woods I'm filthy
and bloody and you're halfway
across the world sitting in an apartment
with Lucy on a sofa letting her accent tamper

with your own tonight
you and I will sit at
computer screens leave greasy
fingerprints on the glass watch our mouths
a pixilated semblance of how we were
milliseconds ago

and after leaving Lucy's you'll be driving
past the beach cigarette jammed up against
your lip as you approach the rim of the pale
strip mall affixed to the street with your
wrist thin over the gearstick while I walk
groggily dragging these antlers in the dark

wondering who left these red gashes
in the needles why were they hacking
at a body out here only to leave vital
bits behind I keep seeing those hard chocolate eyes
that hung on the walls of our town hall
and the pine needles pool
around me like french fries

page 223

tonight the internet will split
on a slurred photo of your face
and it'll be all I'll have in my hands you
listen when I think you're not you hear little
gasps between my words whites
of eyes reaching you
can see the tiny rivets in my fists

still clenched around these antlers
and I'm thinking I'll let them
drop in this jagged hole in the ground dug
by some animal probably even the hunter
won't come out this far

page 224

in part

In an apartment in Chicago I'm waking to what
I think is your body curled around waking
sheet filled mouth and dried saliva in
an apartment in Chicago I'm

loitering on some sort of map I see the
rejected continents
floating about wildly in the apartment
someone offers me a joint first thing

and though I decline my clothes glow
grey green regardless I want to open the curtains
tell them you are
on a small breaking island say

I would wake up sputtering around
your apartment always giving up on sleeping
too early the girls and boys' bodies
slumber over couches and the cat

wobbles between them pawing
unmoving shoulders but you're not
lying in this first slit of sun not
on this deadwood flooring not

caressed by these insistent
these ineffectual paws