The residual anger of erotic dreams
This backyard sprayed and sprayed again.
The cochineal has come back, ravenous
in its slow moving ways. Not quite fixed,
this moment: the neighbor shooting a bb gun
at a cardboard box. Propped, it will remain
for weeks. I smell rotting meat and it fills me
with alarm. It routes through, untraceable,
feeling strangely like desire. Not the thing
itself, just a likeness caught: the reflection
of a window or the eye askance. But to be
clear, the meat is still unsettling, the smell
a fine catalog of threads for pulling: an eye
running, a salivary gland in excess, a thing
we return to soft and in syllables. Calling a
name when it needles the mind.
Catalpa sphinx
mothlight mutualism
there is but one feeder
and host a delicate balance
they return
pupal sphinx
buried collar
round the old
marks
cloistered thorax
catalpa
sphinx
resting spindling
feeding
feral spoiler
among leaves
on a notion of two-wing delights
guaranteed
midge
streetlight exchange
within
disruption
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Brita Sauer graduated with an MFA from NMSU and is also a librarian. She has worked in libraries in New Mexico and is interested in the intersection of collection and ecology. She has work published or forthcoming on The Academy of American Poets poets.org site, Plant-Human Quarterly, The Listening Eye, Gone Lawn, and a short film shown at the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival.