Lament for the Thing

Our mistake was in the trusting; who knows
if your hound licks your face for threat or taste.

Thing, my dog has chewed bald
the tip of his tail. Here, let’s start somewhere

cold and end somewhere else, someplace
colder. Blow off the noumenon and reckon on
what location translates to: not much.

We need to go; we haven’t. The landscapes treat us with suspicion,
wild animals watch us slantwise.

Dear Thing, I am thinking of going to the Antarctic too.

Or New York.

Love has driven me bruised and blue. I am inconsolable
and dislocated; I spin spin spin

as a result of some combination of
whisky and chagrin. Thing, I’m saying I want

to defibrillate the landscape and then fall in;
for the ground to buck or shake and swallow

me whole, except for my hand unfolding from the snow
like a daffodil. This is how we say goodbye. And this is why
you came here. To disappear.