When I wake before her
I set a *** of coffee
and let my ears catch gunshots

They say the old don’t sleep
that their lives sit too heavy in their heads
volumes full of names they’ve forgotten
and people outlived

At the edge of town hunters drag in doe
They are bulls towing a plow through ash
and bones

I am a boy at daggers with being
and I tell her I know nothing anymore

When she yawned it wasn’t sleep pulling at her
it was her dreams

A river cuts through an open field
the Moon rolls down the stream
like the child’s paper boat
A woman sits at the riverbank
dressed in white silk
her husband floats past
his skin blue like denim
he turns his rotting head
parts his dead lips
and smiles for his bride

He was the kind of guy
you'd find sitting at the back of a bar
with some far off look
as if his mind had been ripped from his head
like a child from a mother
He wore a black shirt
and a silver buckle around his waist
When he ordered a drink
you knew he'd been working again
because he'd tap his foot
and wipe the blood from his hands