Fang Face
       

The joy is too much, and the mouth is too
mouth, and one person's shit storm
is another's small business venture

in the wilds of whatever's left of the wilderness
capitalism. The satellites and hockey pucks

forever in our orbit. The meadow's not
pastoral, or at least not enough, so the prey
and the predators get colder by the second,

eyeing each other by the lamplight provided,
and the library books in their flood

of radiation. If only we could be less
human, from our bleeding liquid centers
to our janitor's ascension, maybe then

we wouldn't feel so tearful at the first glancing
blow of the rows and rows of serrated fences,

the dress of leaves so beautifully constructed.
And seemingly lovely, the princess
and the strawberry, the hunter and the bees,

swarming the house and the keeper in his dream
until nobody recognizes how deadly

we can be, and then I'm a fiction
or you're a technician. I hate the way stories
seem to love a conclusion. I love
the bird's singing just before it gets eaten.

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Copyright © 2012 Matt Hart All rights reserved
from Columbia Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission