Sundays they gave to autumn
in exchange for venison
and bullets
and white pills like constellations.
Aunt Sharon stayed up for days
and fell into death in a pastoral course,
such that no ambulance siren dare
smother the clattery of aphid adult chatter
of 17 September in the country.

God witness the men
who wander drunk highways
their spice racks teeming with
7.62 and .223 and
how skittish is Hypnos that a stray 9
settled on the cornrows of the car seat broadcloth
startles him back into Creation.

“if you stay having the radio on,
sometimes you hear the
tiniest fragments of song
or womblike chatter separated
by the static of winter’s crone.”

Tuesdays they forgave the spring.
The unfortunate nature of insulin
is that it’s a finite product
and one day Matthew Crifford is
welcoming the bullet to the bridge of his nose
with the same half open eyes
he promised a can of Hormel chili
to a 13 year old in Grand Rapids.
“We got the medicine, there really isn’t
Anything to talk about.”

Who left the lid loose on the peach preserves?
God: in winter, in utero, and shortly thereafter,
in summer is when he stalks.