Pathogen I

Skinned rabbit on a pile of tires
next to the filling station.

Bright bugs around our faces,
lit orange by the falling sun.

You reach into the wet gears
of your bike, your knuckles huge,

bruised the color of soft avocados.
What kind of street is this, I ask --

you are caught in the bike chain,
in loosing and refastening its teeth.

Red-faced men in baseball caps
drive their mustard pickup next

to a pump: the bell rings twice.
The blue woman in the florescent

glass booth nods to herself, reading
intently, doesn't look up. You fall

back on your ass, gasping. Above us,
a moth clinging to a bulb opens its brown wings.

Summer Horses

through the screen door
the crunch of gravel as pick-ups roll
into the gas station next door,
the hum of a lawn mower or electric
saw from some other street

the parakeet by the window murmurs
to himself in the mirror, plucking
at a wing, if he picks anymore
he'll have nothing left

the reek of his cage mixes
with the sour scent of our pillows,
your sparse hair sweat-damp,
you pretend to sleep

the horses in the poster above the bed
are turned away, looking up
the faded hill at a fly-specked house

White Shirts

While you sleep, I watch a movie. A man bangs his head against a shelf in a library. It's the magazine section: I can almost tell the year of the movie from the magazine titles. I love the image of white shirts hanging on a clothesline, as long as it's not in my backyard.
He picks scabs into the backs of his hands, and tapes old pictures of tigers all over his mirror. He ends up cutting off his fingernails.

When we lived together, I pretended I didn't like cats -- they seemed too sentimental for you, you who read Nietzsche long into the night. We slept on a futon you rolled up against the wall every morning. It was so hot in Portland, the futon stank no matter how many times you washed the sheets.

I used to worry about you burning; your medication made you so vulnerable to light. After the hospital, you moved stiffly, like a dried up robot. The cats didn't recognize you, hissed at you like you were the garbage man. And your tongue rolled out at odd intervals.

Later we decided to pick out a kitten together. You said it was too soon after our first cat died of cancer. I accused you of only caring about the sofa.

The Cold

The virus traveled to her blood
after her fingertips brushed the hem

of his coat, he was leaving again
in the middle of the night, the baby

crying, the heat turned off a week ago –
she had collected matches, tried

to empty the throat of the fireplace,
tried to take out the bricks blocking

the chimney with her sewing scissors
and a butter knife so she could pile

a chair or two, perhaps some of his
books, into the fat black mouth
unhinging its jaw like a cartoon snake.

Mother, Nurse, Mouth

fevered, submerged, she dreams
of hands holding her down, wrapping
her in medical dressings, her skin
a wound now as they wind her

a spider turning her sideways, laying
her on her stomach with rapid, spiny,
stiff legs, the filmy matter covering
her neck, her ears, her eyes already
closed, she barely feels the bite