When the exposed lungs came, inside the fox—
worked over and skinned—I sat listening,
I couldn’t watch when the director,
saying how the fox was found in a dumpster,
half-dead, drew the kind needle, plunged . . .

In my throat, this great dream was growling
and laying its ears back. The dream’s tail
growing bushy in my lungs. This is the only
time I’ll say this: I screamed that animal loose.

I don’t expect you to understand.

Who can say why cruelty has a home?
To the ones who say, “oh
that’s just an animal, so cruelty is different.”
This is about lungs holding us together,

red globes in the stranger’s coiled fingers
and then a knife to the seams
holding them together. He threw away
the color red for whatever reason he had.

You, dreamer, trust a stranger with this.

I can tell you that I have been teething
again. There are nights all I do is rock in bed
because the sounds are coming in
but always, always the more going out.