In Mexico the little mixed herds come home in the evening,
slow through that hard-colored landscape, all driven together-
the hens, a few pigs, a burro, two cows, and the thin
perro that is everywhere. It is the same scene here.
The nurses herd us. In our snouts and feathers
we move through the rigid cactus shapes of chairs
colored to lie, belie terror and worse.
Assorted and unlikely as the lives we bear,
we go together to bed, one dozen of us.
It was a hard day’s grazing, we fed on spines of courtesy
and scratched up a few dry bugs of kindness.
But we deserved less than that generosity.
Our teats of giving hang dry. Our poor peons are bewildered
and poorer still, the whole landscape is impoverished
by the unnatural economy of this group’s greed
whose bark is bitter, who are swaybacked, fruitless, unfleshed.
An enchantment took us from our selves and said,
“Let these twelve be stripped to the beast, be fools
to each other, let all other intents be wasted,”
and struck from our mouths our mutual syllables.
The pen echoes to a meaningless moo, “I want to go home,”
one cackles over sins, one yaps in rhythmic complaining,
But those shapes under the sheets are not like mine.
We are locked in unlove. I am sick of my own braying.
The metaphor shakes like my hand. Come, Prince of Pills,
electric kiss, undo us, and we will appear
wearing each other’s pain like silk, the awful
richness of feeling we blame, but barely remember.
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