A pack of wolves is called a Mozart. A pack of hotdogs is called a Sincerity. I rolled my memories of you up in a carpet and put them in storage. Mothballs for a ring. Plastic for a shining tomorrow.
I’m going to walk to town to show that I remember the way. I’m going to move into a Dollar Tree and pretend to be made in China. I never learned to play a champagne flute.
I keep my toes clean. I’m reshooting my life as a romantic comedy. I’m recasting it with someone who isn’t you. Maybe someone prefabricated in China. Maybe someone
who appreciates a good carpet. We’ll eat hotdogs in the park and feed them to the wolves. They need all the help they can get with the current state of conservation efforts.
I ate bear until I became bear. Digested by crows and shunned by the rich. Berries and salmon for breakfast. The slower friend for lunch. Nothing is the way they told us it would be, and yet we blame ourselves. I wandered the mountains until I found a man lonely enough to be myself. We played gin rummy, tiddledywinks, and I always cheated. He was a wolf, or at least was eaten by one. Sometimes, I suspect everyone alive is dead or pretending to be. This explains the nature of the crepe, which dares not rise to heaven no matter how soft those lutes appear. His fur was worn brown and full of faded surprises, like the sun on a Texas birthday party. I’m still waiting to hear back from his lawyer on whether we’ve got a case with this thing or have to keep on living this way, if you can call it that.
Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than thirty books, including the poetry collections Riceland, The Bottle Episode, and his newest, Having a Baby to Save a Marriage, as well as his latest novels Goodbye, Mr. Lonely and The Saviors. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.