from The Book of Funnels

By Christian Hawkey
Fräulein, can you





                      sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I drag my sleeping bag
into the meadow’s precise center
& crawl inside, head first. Fräulein, there is the stars’
ceaseless drilling. I close my eyes. Somewhere below me
a star-nosed mole cuts its webbed hand
on a shard of glass. I close my ears
& over my body the current of a young doe
eddies, ripples across the field, a low-lying midnight fog
swirling after her, falling back, suspended. I know you are close.
The scar across my cheek burns. I think of reentering
                      your atmosphere,
                      your long, burning hair





Don’t move. The slightest motion

                      & this landscape, erased by floodlights
Copyright Credit: Excerpt from The Book of Funnels (2004) by Christian Hawkey. Reprinted with the permission of Verse Press.
Source: The Book of Funnels (Wave Books, 2004)