Melissa Crowe

I cry each time we say goodbye because I know I’m always sending you to war

You the only one doing the speed limit, the other drivers
seem intent on killing you, their unblinkered swerves and also
the way their carelessness makes you feel: unloved, not just

as a man but as a member of the tribe. They hate the tribe?
That’s war. In truth, you feel embattled even when you stay—
one afternoon last spring you napped in the hammock, woke

to a baby jay blinking from the grass, then spotted its wobbly
sibling on the woodpile, testing wings. Though you skipped
dinner, followed the tender pair around the yard till dark,

hissing off the neighbor’s cat, that night she mangled both
while we lay sleeping. What comfort can I offer, love,
other than to say we soldier on together? I read a novel

in which two sailors hack the wings off a seabird
and watch it waddle the deck in terror. The scene’s invented,
so why do I carry that bird’s fear like it’s still trapped there

with that crew, their cruelty? What’s it mean that I don’t
believe in God but I believe in that bird, that the laughter
of those men is real? I think sometimes how terrible

to be a wild creature injured and nowhere to go for help,
no skillful hand to tend your wounds, but then I think of
healing tongues, succor of one warm flank against another.

And of the children who’ve died, penned at the border,
their parents made to grieve in other cages, locked
by hands. What a world we have been given, love.

What a world we lot have made by hand— Remember
last summer, when we drove our car partway up a mountain
so a new friend could cart us to the top in her jeep,

steepest drive to the queendom of her hand-hewn house,
cement floors she’d poured herself and a vegetable garden,
solar panels, rain collecting in barrels? Up there we drank

kava, bitter mud that numbed our tongues, the children
running barefoot in the gathering dusk, then watched
our friend use a shovel to cut the head off a rattlesnake,

just a baby she said, that didn’t know better than to belly
into the yard. She threw its body, both halves,
into the fire pit, its mouth still opening and closing

like a slow fist. I’m not saying she was wrong—
villainy is real, but she’s no more a villain
than our neighbor’s cat. Her nerve awed me, the strength

of her muscled arms, how she could feel sorry for the snake
even while it burned in a hell of her making. As for me,
I feel born on the wrong planet. Or this planet’s just wrong.

Here it’s always like seeing rabbits at the side of the truck-mad
road—us thrilling at their soft wildness, then dread. This spring,
when fledglings scream themselves hoarse for the morsels

their parents drop into their mouths, I’ll usher you inside,
draw the blinds. But come morning, you’ll find on the lawn
one body, neck broken, bury it behind the shed.

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Melissa Crowe is the author of Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019), and her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, POETRY, Seneca Review, Thrush and Tupelo Quarterly, among other journals. She’s coordinator of the MFA program in creative writing at UNCW, where she teaches poetry and publishing.