Paul Foster Johnson

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WRITTEN INTO THE BESTIARY

 

The bluejay and the red-eyed lamb

 

Were cheap toys

for the phalanstery kids

 

Some magic show

the park of declarations

 

 *****

 

When you were born

the wolves outside the town

sniffed only

 

Never neutral

out of the drought

wavered a beginning

in the grove

 

Surrounded by footfalls

as they returned

from the inmost beaches

 

With ventifacts smoothed

from the cannibals’ poems