Backlit by the central region’s dying

bright white star, we grow great bovine haunches,

cusps, dark tails, and knots. We do deadlifts, up

and down and up and up and up.

 

In the constellation Vulpecula,

we don’t know what to make of words like grow,

deadlift, lightyear, taste of strawberries, or

cusp. We count in time with predators, keep

 

our sidereal days crepuscular,

point our pointed fox-masks at the summer

or the Summer Triangle, burrow in

for winter, damn the cost. We don’t speak in

 

riddles, round our numbers, count our losses.

We could do anything, lift anything

up. They won’t know what to make of us, dead-

lifting, red-coated and well-muscled, how

 

we don’t know what to make of words like loss.

We pant and thrust. We lift the vulpine dead,

align our spines and missing eyes. We close

like shutters, feast or famine, gasping and

 

swimming like the dead. We could make a feast

of distance, fall in love with anything.

We are as omnivorous as failing

swimmers, looking up to take a breath.