post-hysteria
we have arrived at this solemn and unsettled place
where half of my body has atrophied like the quiet
still of a frozen river; a salmon dead in motion
in a chunk of white ice — lonesome streak of slick
pink skin, prime meat. before me, a gray wolf
gnaws at its own hind leg, the phantom salmon
watching it eat with that everlasting bulbous eye.
we shiver — our fingers blue by day and black by
night — melting the ice and cooking the fish over
dying flames. we eat with our bare hands, catching
the stars that spill from the gills of the final salmon,
and mary points out the milky way galaxy in its
streams of brilliance, rainbow fractals, glowing
holy and alight, framed against a thousand years
of winter. in spanish, the milky way is la viá
láctea, the way preceding spilled milk — roads before
snow, brown life before white saturation. and now, here,
on the third day we emerge from our frost bodies
to again eat the slick salmon and later, shrouded
in hunger, the wolf starving just like us. mary’s
hands shake, cradling the skinning knife like
the mouth of the river holds frozen water curled
up inside itself — like us, the river chooses each
night what it must carry inside its crooked body
to survive and what, like our hunger, we
must relinquish to make it to the next galaxy
where we may yet outlive another frost.