Bondage

The chickens wired off from each other
are sure taking their sweet time dying off.
With grain enough to sate a small army.
No wolves around here anymore. Gaps
too narrow to invite the kind of violence
we bring upon our neighbors as children
& later as men. & winter is years away.
Mornings unroll like butcher’s paper
awaiting seepage. Uninterrogated,
which is to say taken for granted, this
shelter, captivity // this unasked for
truce. & we naturally expect nothing less
than thank you. There’s comfort in entering
our own stories as object, never needing
to know the subject of our sentence.
What is wholeness if we were never
whole? Leaning hard into fist, a boy
who has never asked for more is learning.
It begins with a vowel: one unending o
// a circle without closure. Then he raises
himself up to look his father straight
in the eye. The moment is a statue
& the statue is stone. An axe changes
hands. No softens. I’m not that hungry
yields to hunger. The chickens look
worried. The dogs tethered out back
are readying, have always been ready.
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________________________−with a line from Dawn Lundy Martin