[i] 
Among today’s fatalities: some kind of butterfly, yellow and black, folded 
on wet concrete. The wind here is cold. The dog next door barks.  The 
trees grow true. They must, in their small squares of earth.  
 
[ii] 
Beyond the town, chaos; within the town, chaos. 
There are only so many postcards. When they are gone, silence. 
What then in this place, this exile, from which I budget my words. 
 
[iii] 
The neighbor-dog has not stopped barking for a week. What is 
to be done. Where are the boundaries. At each meal I hear 
the chained thing, its every noise help, help. 
 
[iv] 
From this hilltop even the peaks seem surmountable. That is the 
cruelty of distance. Above my descent there are birds, maybe hawks, 
circling. A doe with a shattered hind leg hides in the grass, twin 
fawns leggy and pale-flecked beneath her. 
 
[v] 
There are no answers. There are only images: the orange kittens washing 
each other’s faces; the crunch of the tire flattening the blackbird corpse; 
the lover’s back, beautiful, forever turned. 
 
[vi] 
This morning the neighbor’s voice: They took my puppy! He’s gone! 
I learn from locals that what I thought were hawks were vultures. 
The dog returns and will not bark. You do not write me. Wings cast 
shadows; I do not see the deer. What to do in this new silence.

Bio: Jess Dimond