Beat the Ranger, by Christopher DeWeese

I am from extremely real streets.
Hills where cars spun and slipped
through Styrofoam winters
like graphs of downward mobility.
I was like "Show me a freak
and I'll show you a mirror,"
my mother a compass
measuring the apex of my potential.
I lived with a tiger before.
Like an orphan gone official,
I gave up all hope
and lived with a lion once.
Snow diminished the borders
neighbors recognized
until their driveways rusted,
mugs full of "graveyard"
emptied to dissolve the filthy ice.
I slept with my tongue sticking out
as if I were nostalgic
for that old envelope taste,
a standard cavalry
ringing the growl inside me.
"I'll sit out this forest fire," I mumbled.
I kissed my own hand
and started chewing.
My tent held the sound
high tide scrapes from driftwood
like a grandfather,
suburbs ringing with it
where hair meets camping.
I left something important there;
a stack of rocks, a fort that lasted,
a plastic garbage bag
full of my secrets, which were food
where bears lingered
between my soul and my fear
like real bears inside me
as I slept, fire buried under the sand
like a harvest so perfect
no one remembers eating it.

No More Cluster Fly, No Fall Warbler, by K.A. Hays

No ecstatic waking from long stupors
when heat riles the room. No buzzing at lights.

No perching on spruces then shooting on south,
yellow-rumped, drab-backed and intent on warmth.

What of the unpruned tree that strips each year?
No apples kept; no leaves; no system of belief--

they rot, make mold. Or the deer fill up on the flesh.
I'm staying leafless for the wind so when it comes

it will pass through, breaking no limbs. I fear
the blustering thing--what lets the apples fall.