A Woman Runs on the First Day of Spring

—Chicago

When I am a stranger to my own

ruin, twilight reminds me

to give alms to my best sins.

March: the city is purging

in the humility of worms, salt

washing from the grasses.

When I breathe in, I say thank you.

When I breathe out, I say gone,

I say garden, I say guns.

Three crows devour the dead

rat.

Look at all that booty

,

the man mutters and blows

me kisses. The sky is worthless

and my bulbous ass is always

a dinner bell. I run farther,

I run with a feather inside

my ear, I run from a bird

with a broken neck and follow

the sound of thawing snow.

Aren't we all boundless

though? The way a dream

secretes the morning after,

the way moths feed on the eyes

of fawn. Two and not two—

vines that strangle trees never

say they're sorry. I reach

the lake with this grateful

ache in my throat. And if I say

my body is its own crumbling

country, if I say I am always

my own home—then

what does that make me?