baby doesn’t like the romance of his lady’s fingers in the honey pot, of a prairie wolf’s lips glossed in the stain of a kill.

he doesn’t like dirty dogs, the breeds that tear up turnips and bury bones in his garden.

he likes his greyhounds poised before the window, guarding master from the moon’s melancholy watch over him.

I woke beside him in a sleepy torpor, struck by a vision which sat low in my womb, heavy as an ostrich egg.

I snuck to the dark side of the lawn, bore down and let red clumps drop, plop plop plop, into the soil,

then scooped the earth over my little dream babies, laid my hands over the dirt and prayed for a beanstalk:

I thought imagine baby’s horror at the stalk’s spectral arm—ghoulish, green, aggravated—beating on the window and startling the hounds …

him and his loyal thoroughbreds howling at the slightest freakshow … and then I, the moon’s beloved mongrel, not even two feet at the withers,

throw my voice at them, mimicking the cry of a pack.