Canteen: The State of Creation

(from Issue Three)

FAR FROM THE FIELD

The potted tree, thirsting.

A bird of prey, wide as a falling man,

crying, smacks the second-story glass

and drops its caught mouse,

then lies back on the balcony, the top half

of a body in bed,

staring in disbelief.

On the other side of the window,

you are on the telephone

shouting at a man,

but call exuberantly, Whoa!

The bird, now on a branch,

returns to his circling friend

and the mouse is left

on the balcony, dead,

but seemingly wondering how.

What we wonder is whose blood is

that on the glass, and whose job is that mouse.

FIG

Miniature woman, all womb.

I don’t see you, brown,

uncamouflaged as the bottom

or nipple in a dream,

till the beetle’s buried

himself to the neck

in your soft flesh.

MOVING DAY

The dummy with its cloth-sack chest

and hard head, propped

on a footlocker outside the bungalow.

On the hill, a red-and-blue-striped tent—

a termite wedding,

with a fat lady and tattoos.

This morning there were orange flowers

at the Mayan Frank Lloyd Wright.

Dana Goodyear is the author of Honey and Junk, a poetry collection, and is a staff writer for the New Yorker.