—Just after you sign and envision building homes on this tract you smell me in the dark know that I move through this terrain at night though you only think of building and selling even now you believe you can borrow my spirit by wearing a mask of my face on your face look at me delve into your fears is your deepest fear to be hacked strangled or be strapped to an IV in a bed with no chance to die I can grasp a turtle and break its shell with one bite I can pounce on a deer and crush its skull and neck with my teeth you slash and burn in the jungle force the snakes and macaws to retreat you even burn your own species alive look into my eyes I am your mirror and transformer if you destroy my species I will shape-shift and hunt you in your dreams the fingerprints of your hands resemble the black rosettes on my skin and you will not escape you will never comprehend the twin nights in my eyes remember as a child you came up the steps from the basement and flicking off the light at the top of the stairs feared a hand about to grasp your shoulder from behind that fear is alive and now as you rummage for keys at your apartment doorstep I am a passing jogger about to pounce I am the creature who smells your darkest thoughts and as you turn the key in the lock day or night out of the darkness I spring—
Río Chamita
Mule deer browse in the meadow
and meander in clusters down the slope
across a dry pond bed;
at a shooting range, we stare at a machine
loaded with orange-centered circular targets
but are not here to practice firing at ducks;
you climb a metal ladder, sit
on a bench high in a ponderosa pine,
and, gazing far, say hunters shoot from here;
we step onto a floating dock, while swallows
scissor the air, loop back,
fuchsia-streaked clouds undulate on the water;
and when we canoed around a floating island of reeds,
I understood we came here
to ignite behind our eyelids—
a yellow-headed blackbird perches on a cattail;
beyond a green metal fence, buffalo graze—
while water runs into this pond, before it spills
over a metal gate into the Río Chamita,
we gather our lives in this pooling—