Volume 13, Number 1

CONCESSIONS, ENTREATIES

Is that you, browsing beyond the cactus?
Sometimes I feel you don’t
love me and want to dissolve

the parliament.
It’s like scaring a deer away just by watching it
eat the front yard.

Maybe if I were bilingual I could
explain the harm I mean
is smartly targeted, irretrievable,

as any harm should be
that wears the name.
Unlike Terry and Peter we don’t dream

the same night of the same man
we haven’t spoken to
in years or play medieval instruments

or dance like Allison and Patrick do
each Sunday in their socks,
writing theater with their feet.

We’re in an endless phase of reparations
but you claim you can’t
read my hand-scrawled treaties.

They concede everything
but the dog.
He sleeps with you but the dog

is flesh of my flesh, blood
of my blood—
you know his toes

are long and bony, curved
like mine.
I am not Danish nor a patrician bard

but I am great at looking
at animals to make them move,
even without speaking, even you.

-Kathleen Winter