The Listener, The Land
       

I ask your name to understand
who’s swimming upstream. The loud knives

gleam along the forests. Sucker punch
the kidney, I tell you, bright tissue

cracks like wrapping paper,
under the lights, long forgotten by me,

my inferior raincoat. The plastic bear
rattles his plastic claws, under the chin

of his swollen prey, the green evening
casting hidden candies on benches

in hopes of understanding. I think
the meaty fish is done for, but

my flaming camp sacks have been wrong
before. The night will come again, before

this racket gets out of hand, and
in the quiet room I’ll stitch

your fabric name to the tops of trees.

Copyright © 2010 Trey Moody All rights reserved
from Climate Reply
New Michigan Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission