few weeks ago
a coyote

tried to drag
someone
from a playground

why does
cool stuff
always happen

to other kids?

tired of your
force majeure

of how my body
will tilt & yield
to a gravitational field

aim at isolation
without
a fixed condition

i could use
a little less

third law opposition

retreat
from a haze
from life's reach

up & out

what breaths
below?

sightlines
trace pocked
horizons

for enough
articulate pain
to put in

these poems

i wake as
a pillow

midbook

but stay
behind
eyelids

& feel him
absentmin-
dedly

tangle my
fingers in
his beard

bite down on
steel fingers
fishhooked
in my cheek

sweat scales
on a writhing
white underbelly

caught fast &
a taut line pulls
me through wave
after wave after

wave after
relentless
crashing wave