Owen McLeod

Entomology

Once upon a time you drew The True
on a napkin from the Iron Horse Music Hall.
You knew more than I about Being & Time,
plus a bunch of other stuff, like where
to salvage sinks they don’t make anymore.

Month by month, I memorized your lines.
You burned a blue voice, scorched a rainfall wing,
arced many midnights on a turnip-white moon.
On Sundays, you’d fit in my hands like a bowl.
Your dials were marvelous. You stole my how.

I miss you half the time, always while reading
the National Audubon Society Field Guide
to North American Insects & Spiders.
Your pale green body with bright red stripes
was covered with yellowish wax.

I was totally cool with that, plus
the weird way you nudged me
until I stopped singing, devoured my body
while I transferred funds. In the morning
in the garden your cheetah was wow.

I think you might be anything by now—
otter, billboard, a temple of cement.
You’re not what I thought you were, that’s for sure,
not even the doll’s head I found on the bus
on the long and lonely ride home.

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Owen McLeod's poems have found homes in Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, New England Review, Ploughshares, Sixth Finch, The Southern Review, Willow Springs and elsewhere. His debut collection, Dream Kitchen (UNT Press, 2019), won the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry.