Michael Hettich
Singing With My Father

That will never come to pass, as real as those that will:
I saw a picture of a woman stepping from the belly
of a wolf which was bleeding in the snow; in the distance
men wearing fur hats were running through the woods.
The woman was naked. There were no tracks
in the snow. The wolf wasn't dead yet; its head
was raised up a little; its eyes were still open.

The first day I spent with my wife, she caught
two small trout she gutted with her thumbnails, while
they were still quivering. She fried them in garlic
and cornmeal as dusk turned opaque, and more
stars than I'd ever seen
crowded out the darkness.

1-882983-66-1
16 pages/$9