In Me. Hidden, A Coyote

As though longing for a grave or,

in my youth, blood,

I feel a stirring inward,

and when the inward refuses to unlock doors, there comes a stirring for a tearing away of the body,

for kneeling, as I did in childhood, against stone.

Why the desire to be still for hours, still and silent?

I am ashamed to cry or sing or pray,

even in a corner in my house,

even in the spare room in my ribs,

even in the dark of my eyelid.

But I’ll fall down, again,

down into a scattering.

Into a scattering a bit of bone, a hide, as though in me, hidden, a coyote.

And this desert, it wanders, takes branches into its mouth, hungers, racks the length of its back against brush.

Into a scattering, it howls, breaks flocks in the sky.
Hallow reeds tremble.

Into a scattering, flocks fall, feathering the ground.
How my heart feels, faltering.

And in this desert, the heat-body inside my body, rises, talks gibberish until my lips are parched.

Into a scattering, the coyote cries through the throat, star-light.

Into a scattering, brambles, so each step brings a pang.

As though for the grave,

the darkness hides in the hide of my thigh when the stirrings still

and the scatterings gather together.

I have laid my palms on the side and watched the prints lift, ghost-like, from the bed.

And then the tremble.

I have crawled, though no trail has been pressed.

The coyote, if it could, would let the tongue roll out, taste its own blood.

Turn in.
Turn indoors.
Turn the doorknob until the neck breaks.

I’d hurl my body into a corner.

Not to be impatient but to have a reason, solid, bruised, to whimper as I do.