after Bea Unwin

​

Know this is not a poem about dreamers.
Know the time it takes to fire a shot off,

and then another. Know the little boys’ heads
taxidermied and pinned to the wall have found their

last home. Know this body
is your last home, stretched skin, pearly teeth

gnashed. My favorite resting place has always
been open lakes, glassy spoons of freshwater

I could tip backwards into my mouth and swallow
if I tried. I’d bet my hat on it. My brother’s little button

nose. The way my hands look when clasped together
in prayer, sweat gleaming on my back and sliding past.

Know this, like spilt beads of a friendship bracelet,
thread-ends frayed. Mourn this, like a dream

that the daybreak keeps on forgetting. And I kept
on collecting—the fireflies in little jars, watching them still

into silence just for something more to dream of. Spilling
their desiccated forms out into the grass. Know that a mouth

on a mouth is a poem unless otherwise. And that the head
of a deer, when mounted, like dandelions rooted deep

within dirt, is nothing more than a home for dead
dreams—or forgotten ones. Know the car is just

another metaphor for endings. You, screeching to a stop
within the rusted-metal home. A child’s broken body

beating its way out of a memory. Know my name,
my shadow. Every little reaching line of my fingers.