Dark Caribou Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Dark caribou
Eating broken winged sparrows
Who are trundled in the branches
Like poisonous holly,
Whispering the
Contaminated thought:
The afterbirth you eyes deluged
When the neighbors could smell them
Crying red hot cinnamon
His experienced body dripped on
You shed of his office’s
Blue second skin
While I was at the somber market
Trying to find the right children
To take home like undernourished
Strangers
To silence and grow in the 1970s windows
Our world experienced through.
You slipped away like a white hare
In blinding snow further up the sinewy
Backs of the Alaskan Range.
Past the gated threshold where your
Body displayed the dripping adultery
Plucked from your vine,
You transformed into naked ribbon
Spooled in his hands, tangled about the thumbs—
I watched with
Kaleidoscope binoculars near the sea
Until the feral child’s hunger obscured
My vision,
And I led him with my kidnapping hand
To the backyard and let him feast on
The orange tree
As I fed the crumbs of broken memories
To the goldfish in their invisible school,
The acidic spray of murdered citrus
smearing my eyes.