Animal Eyes

 Animal Eyes

    after Arthur Sze

“yesterday a coyote trotted across

my headlights and turned his head

but didn’t break stride; that’s how

I want to live on this planet: 

alive to a rabbit at a glass door—

and a flower where there is no flower.”

— from“Unpacking a Globe” 

A 38-year-old man grills a 27-year-old woman 

for intel on her friendships When on “multicolor flashing”

the string of little globe lights hiccup between

the last combination and the first The last Sundance 

in Park City attracts greater

numbers of first timers The server says yes, 

it’s not supposed to be Tacos de

Pastor, but the menus, the cost of re-printing…

Mixed salad in the bulk bins at the co-op costs much

less than salads packaged in boxes, but a great

many of the leaves in the bins have given up hope

and slide their green-black selves against their peers

Ronald Bronstein wrote Mary Supreme with his buddy Josh 

and at the Q&A Ronald says neither of them can stand boring people 

(people who bore him, presumably) At at a small art gallery

a 71-year-old man says every Thursday he visits his wife

in the memory care unit, but I don’t hear about the other days A Black man 

on Instagram urges us to make as many friends as widely as we can, saying 

the president and his people want us all to be fighting: black against white 

against brown and men against women The building I live in 

was once a barn, and, on the 2nd floor, I think of the bicycle, 

the motorcycle, and the washing machine and dryer down 

there as two donkeys and a horse, their rounded rumps, 

swayed backs, flickering amber manes, nervous hooves 

stamping the packed earth, and the wind 

always coming in through the wall