Hope Jordan
Last Snow
Dog, we dawned
together as the moon strobed
through branches, the trooper’s light pulsed
blue from the highway and bald eagles flew
overhead to the dead pine
behind the neighbors’ house
where children ride
four-wheelers through frozen ruts.
Here lie the pitiable pellets
of your last defecation, scattered
in a half-circle like the cartoon smile
of a snowman.
Temptations of Entropy
I smell the blood of the bull
pine they limbed today. Warmest winter
in history, sap’s running early
and the geese never left.
Who will come upon our leavings
someday far from now; a red fragment
from a bowl I bought on sale
because it made olives look beautiful?
I drive to work singing to REM
It’s the end of the world as we know it –
What’ll they say when they excavate
the remains of my stainless-steel refrigerator?
Fern spores fuzz it up, winged maple seeds dig in,
a rash of low blueberry bush
and whatever else doesn’t like shade.
Once, an illustration of what happens
if you let your backyard go—forests choke
back suburbs, swallow swimming pools, dismantle
McMansions, slow-motion-explode
the oldest stone walls.
Out of my car I walk past the man
who asks for gas money or a fuck;
a fire alarm has been going off
inside this strip mall
four long days and counting.
Apologia
Sorry, I was thinking
of the dead raccoon at the side of the trail
a quarter mile from the ravine at the bottom of the slope
crowned by railroad tracks used only twice a year
by someone in Georgia who ships a local clay by freight car
to the 3M plant in Tilton for the manufacture of custom adhesives
with insulating properties.
I was thinking of the raccoon,
the way the dog rolled on it, joyously, as dogs do, sliding
partway down the slope, paws aloft, dragging
the corpse along down.
I was thinking of the porcupine
the dog tangled with near the spur that leads to the bluff
we still call Condom Point for no reason other than 15 years ago
we brought gloves and a trash bag to tackle a heap of beer cans
and found a dozen used rubbers mixed in.
I was thinking of the porcupine
quills, how you tried to pull them all out, how later the vet said
if left in they can work their mindless ways straight through a body,
puncturing vital organs as they go.
Hope Jordan grew up in Chittenango, NY, holds a dual BA from Syracuse and an MFA from UMass Boston. She lives in NH, where she was the state’s first official poetry slam master. Her chapbook is The Day She Decided to Feed Crows. Twitter and Insta: @hopejordannh Facebook: hopejordanwriter Website: http://hopejordan.pressfolios.com/