Two wolves mating and then
at rest, the carnal moment just caught.
How easy to miss it. How softly
their ears ward off flies. Who am I
to be in love, wearing my skin as if
it were not pelt. The hummingbird’s throat
like a kiss you had forgotten,
fluorescing in the sun.
I don’t want to go, having met creosote,
having met the mouth of the thing I love.
The saguaro, not beautiful, not frivolous,
but alive. Labyrinth creatures.
They guard, they grow, strangle
themselves turning to face the sun.
Strange, to stand in this earth
and think of suicide. I remember you as
your death and your hold. A primitive
road. The branch breaking
beneath two hawks tangling
for one tuft of meat.
QUINN LEWIS's poems have appeared or will soon in The Southern Review, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She was a Claudia Emerson Scholar at the 2018 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She lives on a farm and takes care of a horse in northeast Pennsylvania.
