This Night Has Ended

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Crawl back into the earth! The end is near!

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Whales asphyxiate
and trees are split to their quick.

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Buzzards dispose of eyes in fields
digested with the beetles.

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Who will come to fish out my legs and teeth?

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I’m crawling back into the earth.

It is time for dying.

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Do you think they’ll remember
my favorite word was enchantment?

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Anatomy of a Magnolia

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Magnolia twirls when she runs
down Thomas Street to greet him
amongst the Kudzu vines,
just flowery enough for me to see
her long dark hair wrap around his body.

Magnolia sits in the rear view mirror of the backseat,
beige leather heats when it's almost ninety-five degrees,
smothers her into its coils,
her blue eye shadow melts into her velvet eyelids,
but when I look back again I do not see her.

Magnolia waits in my bed.
She got home before I did.
Her Texsheen intimates are already on and she says
Didn’t you see that glorious tree?
The leaves are just beginning to crust
and isn’t it just lovely.

Magnolia sleeps in my bed
I watch her in the mirror.

She sings me “Edelweiss.”
She must have woken up before me.
I see her face imprinted in the bark
but no one else can see her skin.