You ask me when the fox will be on the wall,
the one furred corner to corner in raccoons,    
because you haven’t learned the trick
of the deer, how it lifts its eyes, sudden
against grey, how it tips the chandelier
of its antlers and eyes the road, the three leaps
that melt it to a specter of pine, like the does
I saw evenings when my father held me, the wet
orange sparks floating above kudzu
in the dark, their necks invisible as hours,
and I really think it’s better that gunshot
never cracked in your ears, that your fist hasn’t
wrapped the dome of a dove’s head, opened
its gullet to see the swallowed millet—
there’s no need for gravel in your gizzard,
and I’d give you all the dogs for pets, pink slobber,
teeth sheathed in bubblegum lips, the howl
of the grizzled hound as he tracks the red scent
through the snow makes no sense to you,
though you shiver when my Corgi sidles up, push
insistent hands against his nose. I ask if he is fox
or hound, hoping to stump with the pointed ears,
but you are stuck, you ask when my dog will hang
on the wall, emptied like a plastic grocery sack,
no longer his snout between us on the couch—
Make him go away you direct, because Moana has gifted
you crowns of shell, the ocean’s gales against
your tiny, squared shoulders, so I’m just trying
to stay out of your way, a wayward collard
in your organic kale salad, stinking of gunpowder
and taxidermy, eery as the coyote frozen
in a lunge at the dentist that pulled four
molars to make room for incisors
that dropped from my jaw, fangs to rip
the meat from the dove’s breast, grilled
and covered in bacon, to chew my own ankle
from the bear traps sly in winter’s dry foliage.
May you never lift the jowls of a beast
your father slew, never finger the brown
at its gum line, brush its brindle ears,
always see the storybook wolf plush
as your stuffed menagerie, because today
you’ve crept with me into the darkened shack,
your purple sneakers scuffed against
the clapboard as you warmed your shoulders
in pelts peeled from rabbits, knowing what
it might be to cut instead of stitch, how a thing
might bleed and stagger, how a tail might twitch
then still, and how someday you’ll need your teeth:
a smile like feathers, a snarl that snaps like steel.