Half Coyote, Half Motel
Gion Davis

The night Alice Notley died, 
I dreamed of the boxes 
inside the box 
my father gave to me 
as an infant. A tented tin
for fossilized clams 
like a handful of buckshot
beneath several panes
of mica. A coral case 
for his mother’s bolo ties.
A matchbox of wooden
animals. We called it
my treasure box 
but it was his 
memories. I didn’t have
my own. The smell
is what I remember 
in my sleep, 
the only reason 
I would open it, 
sweet leather
and dust and resin. 
Clip-on earrings
tarnished from parting 
with a skin I’d never meet. 
The redwood tree 
he stole for me 
reborn as a red snake 
returning into the branches
of its mother. Love 
is never simpler
than it is in childhood. 
Love, at its most frightening 
in your parent. 
At its darkest 
on the couch at 6 a.m. 
Its cleanest 
across the house 
from one another, 
not speaking. 
There are a lot of things 
between nothing 
and divorce. 
Between meat 
night at Mom’s 
and the trans suicide 
memorialized 
by a happy photo 
at Waffle House. 
Isn’t it confusing? 
I used to be
good at it. These days, 
I am angry and hateful 
and I don’t feel bad. 
Why shouldn’t I 
get a taste 
of what’s fed to me 
by the tube
down my throat? 
To what end,
I keep asking 
of no one. 
I watch the hood 
of a car fly out 
the back of a semi 
as easy as paper. 
I had a boy once
who was blank 
as that. Card-stock 
smooth. I always feel 
a little relieved 
when a poet dies,
like unhooking 
the long spring 
that makes 
the screen door
slam. I will be 
released of this
someday, too. 
My fairly stupid
purpose stringing 
together something 
out of a stranger 
stopping me 
on the street 
saying oh! I love you! 
I heard your voice 
and I love you! 
and a woman I know 
getting into her car. 
She doesn’t notice me.
She looks so sad 
it makes me hurt.
I can’t do anything 
with that or my friend 
and I eating vanilla 
cones from Dairy Queen
reminding ourselves  
of our fathers 
without talking. 
It could have been 
a beautiful day. It 
was February.
It wasn’t a dream, 
it was a drive through
the boxes partitioning 
our one great soul.