I.  I relate to chrome mess. To be slick and unwoven, a slop of remembering. I remain chrome even when I bury a thin-toothed hound in a wooden box, carry ash and cedar up three stories of morning, knuckle my index finger into the eager hole in the wall. I grieve a woman I could return to. I grieve the leashed girl who ministered her sludge to all her sisters.

II.    I cannot hate the earth I came from, a starved dirt belly in the depths of middle america sermon. My mouth learns to adore before it learns distaste. Out of a fogmass emerges an 8 a.m. priest with the leash. I grieve the flavor of men who oath themselves to memory.

III.   To mother wolves I know I will bury. Neglect the leash, the hole, the sludge. A wilded thing inside me that culls the hairs off my wolfchild’s chilled body. I tell my mother I forgot her birthday to fill a hunger for losing something. I grieve a response lacquered in the knowing. Who could blame you?

IV.   My father never left his hometown. Chrome mess made copacetic, still a man, a boy, a fable that never wanders. He loves the filth of familiarity, drinks a woman tenderstained and sistered, eats it all. Everything. Grieves the consumption of consumption, nothing to eat but godteeth.

V.    The bolt gun jams twice in my bicep. A father’s daughter, to be sure. Made of livestock, craving a leash and a fog that smokes out the churchheart of my chest. I am unmade in this body, blooded and forgiven. The 8 a.m. priest grieves his hosanna: Who could blame you?

VI.   I knuckle blueberry jade into my adulating maw.  The cage rattle of transcendent hunger, a mother/father gifting rough melody. Godteeth in the hole, cedared earth under my nailed fingers, a wilded thing remolded into the leashed girl. I grieve the taste of chrome in my throat.

VII.   Tongued heads forget the loss. I couldn’t have been anything except unfilled, a cupped mouth widowed. My wolves killed by choking on too much life, greedy and capacious, preached through the hole of the leash. I grieve the gape the tongue leaves in my skull. Who could blame you?