Sir:
in this particular case it will be noted boss throws his arm
index pointed to mean look anywhere but at me he calls the
land his to cover land he calls gnarly calls her old denim
man and I both had sling limbs weeks apart then weeks
apart panic
chalk green
trucks fenced
yard boat
helicoptered livestock
eagle on a doe
carcass
how to approach underground roots spread fire widowers
a trunk almost ash once in Albuquerque I threw out expired
boxes swore quietly into a dumpster along the food bank
kids who only ate nonperishables during school day
hunger’s
a wild horse
a nest of sage
weighted in stomach
that the alleged mother was an Indian
is it going to rain when he shouts I feel it in my bones when
one stopped dancing everyone became a ghost town I never
knew the name if you brush an anthill with a finger onsite
you can find turquoise some ants attracted like some birds
attracted to blue she dropped an instance into a crease
my palm a day after I was fingerprinted for a federal job
the cop and I talked kindergarten crafts crime
snowflakes ethnicity not fitting inside the form gave me a
new draft then showed me a sink
Sincerely,
August 1912 Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Didn’t you ever hear what caused your father’s death A. No Q What is your mother’s name A. She is an Indian Q Where is she? A. She died Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q a young buck crosses the trail old Q enough to be alone and continue into the Q same plane cholla prickly pear saguaro Q flowers I don’t know the names for Q yellow and purple beneath ranges of snow Q beneath a grocery list I wrote I always Q ask what I don’t mean he says Q your dog looks like a nice dog Q not too scary but scary enough Q I have to agree as I descend Q out of sight still form a question Q for the stranger stemmed up the tripod Q like what do you take pictures of Q is it the view?
clearing I don’t believe in luck though I find myself saying that’s lucky as a filler for silence or merely that’s that twice now the coffee cup bottom has filtered a semievergreen forest in all its ground sludge to say get out of the desert or don’t read about the flammability of buffalo poop read a sign about the massacre of buffalo during Indian Removal Act not the massacre of Indians during buffalo removal comet moths feed on poison ivy whereas morpho butterflies leave banners of blue afterimages on dark foliage when I take off my clothes I think now might be the time to start anti-gravity poses once mastering hand stands I can repopulate my cells then precede myself
•••
Claire Meuschke grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her debut poetry collection Upend is forthcoming from Noemi Press and centers around her grandfather’s archived immigration trial on Angel Island, CA, and her brief stint with the US Forest Service in New Mexico. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona.