Claw Honey Outgo

I wake up at 8:20 am

But don’t manage to open the door until 5:45

My hands fading into icy fog

My head an orange lantern in the slaughtered cloud

The catamount lies low to the ground

Do you know why the cougar never looks straight at you?

Her pupils are too round for a human gaze

A mind could become a stale donut within 1.5 seconds

That’s why she nods to my cheeks

And dissolves into mist like salt under a shadow

Coyotes are such disses

This one plucks up the courage to laugh in my direction

Until his hippocampi multiply

So that he will never be able to forget that evening in 2009 

when the jack-o-lanterns on all the porches were split into maggots

And the skunks filled the street-lightless avenue