The Ballad of Artemis

In my hands I could grapple with the sound

of the rabbit shearing its pelt.

A rabbit scampers through the background

like a soured dream. Its breaths quiver, arrows

finding homes like breaths between the trees. I want nature

as target practice. My body the hunter

& the hunted. I could name the ways my body doesn’t match:

my eyes wider than the rabbit’s. My toes losing skin

like cleft vowels. When I want to bleed I widen

for the moon to chap my thighs. It is not easy to love

the image you create. Sometimes I love

the trees counting themselves, outrunning me.

I wear the rabbit fur as moon shroud, an arrow running

in my fist. It does not parallel my tongue, too slender

for the thickness of my lisp. I speak and nature’s fist

stops to listen. If I wanted, I could own it all, the archer

& the prey. I could listen, winging my breaths from target

to tree trunk, touching the past before it leaves.