Rebecca Hazelton
The Animals Aren't Really Animals Nor Do They Like Me
The Owls is the name of a band.
The band doesn’t care about logging or pellets.
The myth is that the owl can see you coming.
From any direction the owl’s eyes are.
Wolves see the owl and the owl’s intent.
Wolves at the door or the garden gate.
Wolves don’t care about money we just think
they are greedy. Wolves have created a great deal
of art that is lost to us now. Wolves invented
weaving. True fact. The panda holds
in a black band around his middle so much
metaphoric weight. Best insects: bees.
Best big cat: panther. No. Jaguar.
Charming is the animal paying for his newspaper.
He counts the coins so carefully.
It’s the sort of thing one loves at first and hates
after fifty years of marriage.
The animals can wear suits when needed.
The important thing is that interacting
with the animals still leaves me lonely.
The forest we play-act in shudders outwards
and stretches wide like a dog yawning,
like a snake unhinging its jaws
to eat the dog, and what the dog ate,
and what the dog means to the snake.
There Will Be No Protection From Living
There is a shadow waking up every morning beside you,
talking with you every afternoon and evening,
about your day, your success and sadness.
experiment or dalliance,
All of which is to say, I want you
gone if I can’t be with you.
(new Stanza) In love, I speak differently than intended.
I mistake with unexpected results.
The point is need.
The point is
love me or the sour present,
future spurn.
Remember, you were looking at certain things:
how much room there is
with new people in social settings
how much connection
the best possible position to feel quite distant
when I kiss you
I’m able to convince you
what if
time and more
some small taste of shit—my God--
what happened is still happening.
Fairness Doesn't Enter In
The birds follow
the birds. They move in a cloud
of shared ambition.
The trees sway. There must be wind.
This must be landscape, that boat house
and the blue lake
flapping behind it.
These cars
and the drivers gliding along,
also, landscape,
also my body
walking between the street’s bluster,
the postcard’s script.
It’s not rational
to tint the world
with shook out sadness.
Enough sheer layers of color,
and you’ve got real depth.
There are ducks
now, in the thawed lake.
Small green tips
force the ground apart,
shove shoulder
and then a lemon yellow head.
Color is its own belief.
Everything has reappeared, and what else
to call it—everything has come back,
but differently, but different.
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Rebecca Hazelton attended The University of Notre Dame for her MFA, and completed her PhD at Florida State University. She has received fellowships from the University of WisconsinMadison Creative Writing Institute and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Agni, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and others.