In the January flame everything

curls to the core to cure the cold.

The drool from your chin gleams

like seraphim.

When you became a hunting dog

in an incomparable cage,

I rose above the earth

like a nuclear cloud.

You’ve been hungry for so long,

my flowers asleep in their

bulbs dream of you as soil,

as a rain of blood.

Gnaw the chain link

and drop yourself as a wind

into the cold.

January burns like a wild

thing on the run.

The inept snow crowds
around the fire,
plotting and dying.
Some terrains cannot be traversed.

In the mascara woods,
children clump together
in the latest
cloud of today’s breath.

Bleary eyed,
the fox fixates on his quarry,
the weakest of the drey.

Winter is back again,

sitting on my porch swing biting his nails.

The seasons are such nervous people.

I cannot invite him inside.

I have been housing summer and the two don’t get along.

He sneezes and hail falls on me.