I’m talking to my brother on the phone
in the backyard of my parent’s house, blue-belly
lizard on the picket, two donkeys, Cisco and Garbo,
guzzle water near the oak tree. I’m sad because
my stepdad is so sick that he’s not coming to the
reading, and it’s okay, he’s had a bad day, and
everyone knew he might not go, and it’s okay.
And I’m crying a little and my brother understands
but I feel stupid, the child he’s picked up a million
times from school and made happy, can’t make him
happy. Can barely hide her hot tears from the
bummed-out barn animals. I feel not just stupid,
but ineffectual, as a drug that does not work gets
pulled off the market. And just then a snake in the grass,
not a metaphor, just a real snake, half in the hole, half
out of the hole. I almost crush his head. I shout and then I
get close in, he’s not a rattler, he’s a good non-dangerous
vermin-eating snake, and I love him. I sit for awhile
by the overgrown swiss chard and the mountainous pile
of cuttings and weeds and want to make this snake love me
back, want to make it have a nice life, want to hide it
from the mowers blades and protect it from hawk’s
quick-cutting claws, want to make this snake live longer
than me, or rather, I prefer to die first, want to slip under
while watching this snake slink beautifully on and on.
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