Early Duet

Hi drama. It’s nighttime. I’m at the farmhouse

expanded to fit my parents, stepparents, dead grandma, brothers, brother’s girl,
my girl, our chi and pom, sperm donor friend. And all around werewolves.
That’s pretty good Oh hush. When they attacked
I knew what to do: I cut off the thickest branch that held
the village. I thought if I got to it before they did
I could pull back into the shell of nothing. But I was wrong. The past
Whole cosmologies The past
cut off too in a chain reaction like a time traveler killing her father: but in reverse. Then I saw Michigan
at its own terms. Headless, voiceless, it just bird-be in the dawn sun. Hell yeah. I word-loved
this marker mall-ache in the dawn sun. I sang: Roll into your kingdom like you know where you roll like
you’re king of it all in the dawn sun. And I some kind of queen. We keep meaning something. Yeah,

it’s like this mist we’re burning off.

Ana Božičević emigrated to NYC from Croatia in 1997. Her first book, Stars of the Night Commute, is forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky Press in Fall 2009. She co-curates the Stain of Poetry reading series in Brooklyn.