wilding

where have the coyotes gone? i used to hear
their mourning, their minor chords so often
it felt like i spoke their language, like i was
one of them, my hands twisting into paw
shapes with claw-studded prints. once,
the shine of one followed me halfway
around the lake in the middle of an afternoon,
his face eager & bright as his dog brethren,
his fur a mane catching sparks of light. i was
still shedding off my city self, my pace
a hurried new york strut. he trotted to keep up
while i tried to decide if i should stare him down
or keep going like there was no wild creature
become my shadow. i turned & stood firm
in my boots, sealed him in my gaze. a widening
flame behind wolfish eyes, but he kept his rhythm
in my direction. my heart quaked like the layers
of ancient rock beneath me, but still i stood
& glared a strength i was only pretending.
as he neared me, he bypassed me completely
as though i wasn't even there, as though
i were a cottonwood tree, tall & many-limbed,
only there to offer him a moment of shade.
he angled toward the lake, scaled the weather-
worn fence to near its shore, raised his mouth
to the open of sky & let out a shiver moan of howl.
he paused, then turned as his pack answered him
from across the yellow burn of mountain.
as a chorus of yips soared into the shadow of moon,
my feet slipped beneath earth, lengthened into
snake shapes of roots thirsting in the dark,
the trunk of me become stone ever reaching.

cocoon

count the butterflies. count each rise and fall, each hover.
there is only one hummingbird moth, but still you can

count the seconds she is there, lingering in the purple lean
of catmint. how every year she appears once the hummingbirds

themselves are gone, as though she is their offspring,
a part of their cycle, something left behind after they

breathlessly move south. i want to follow them, find a patch
of warmth where i don't need a jacket, don't need a coat,

don't need to burrow further into hibernation. like the man
who has started sleeping in the middle of a dusty path

outside my window. he appears in the thick of dusk each
night, sets up his wedge of foam, his thin sleeping bag,

walks to the creek for his nightly wash. if i miss his arrival,
i catch sight of him every morning before seven when i lift

the shade, motionless in his curve of grey cocoon, no human
part visible. then slowly he ascends, head emerging as he sits up

soundless in the breaking light, searching for cell memory
for this rising, this unfurling. he walks to the privacy of creek reeds

then returns, slow as bear limbs moving. he packs up the soft
memory of his sleep, places it on his back, and disappears

until the crisp of night descends again.

Jill Kitchen's work appears or is forthcoming in Ecotone, Hooligan Mag, The Iowa Review, Lumiere Review, MQR Mixtape, The Night Heron Barks, The Penn Review, Pidgeonholes, Poet Lore, Tahoma Literary Review, trampset, Up the Staircase Quarterly, West Trade Review, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Boulder, Colorado but still dreams of New York streets. Twitter: @jillkitchen, Instagram: @msjillkitchen, https://linktr.ee/jillkitchen

Published April 15 2024