print versionALLISON TITUS
The True Book of Animal Homes
And in the dark patches they root
a shape to settle they flatten
the grass,
nettle & flashweed
sometimes
to nibble on shot up &
tumbled at the brink of a ditch,
a treeline.
& in the dark they root their way to sleep
flattening in the quick of it
the night just going on going on
If they are alone they huddle for warmth
scrub denned, lichen snouted
If they are not alone they huddle for warmth
furred & furrowed,
trundle of heartbeats
muzzled in the leaf pile
::
Some of them are hide–in–plain–sights
Some of them are stays–in–cages
Some of them are fleet in passage
Some are sprung and roam the grounds
::
Some are flat raced twelve
furlongs on turf tracks,
their muscles perfect
fractions of slow
twitch fast twitch, spurs
hooking rib swale pressed
toward the purse that flask
shaped man will cash
for a yacht when the horse
stops running
her slow trot warmdown
on remodeled
bones.
::
Some are ridden on trails tamped through the outfield
of Prescott, Arizona, all the way
to pasture in the growing taller & taller weeds
until their coats thin to chaff.
Threshing wind.
::
Some are innumerable
Some are stacked in cages in a shed
on the west side of Baltimore or
a dark barn in Lancaster, PA
on a grip of flaxen hayfield
& here comes the Amish boy
who flings Alpo mashed with chicken
feed through the mesh wire
dark
& the blackness goes leaking out
& all the small questions getting softer
Some scurry for years
Some are sold by the road like jam like chairs like bonnets
What’s invisible
the cages or the sheds or the barns,
how their callused bellies drag
whelp-heavy & freckled
::
Some are prizes
Some are hunted & crumpled
one by one in the marsh
in the backcountry
in the Flint Hills tallgrass prairie
their skin thrown down
on the table & zipped up
into the shape of the myth
of the victory to
hang on a wall
hang in a room
: an arrangement
convincing
enough :
the best representation
of the best representation
of an elk
of an owl
of a wolf
::
Some of them are embalmed ones
Some of them are time that does
not measure itself
Some are drawn with a very fine camelhair brush
::
Some are muscular with the fastest joy
Some are lost
Some are feasting on mulberries behind the heat pump
Some are those who are too many
whose ancient hearts are measured against their
turning-white fur
& every seven days the woman
whose job it is draws
each from his kennel
to the end of the hall
to the cold steel table
& touches his nose his
head the twitching flags
of his ears & pinches
the syringe into his
shoulder
& waits
& waits
& strokes his soft soft fur
until he falls away, into
What does or doesn’t come next
: infinite meadow of remarkable smells
& grazing the tall fescue in the sun
& black bees sleeping in the red clover
& the sunlight deep then deeper the
crepe myrtle in bloom & somewhere
the door to a house opens
::
Some are ones given less time
Some are ones that humans fail
Some are a procession of clouds
Some root for crickets & moths, sharp little
beaks scraping dirt from dirt
::
& some with a field to stand in
::
Some are those slumped & tethered out back of the market
that’s a front for some other kind of market
at the corner of 24th & M.
Some are those sprawled in the dead grass on the hottest weekend
of the heat advisory summer,
no bucket of water to cool their parched
& panting no slip of shade
The one between the garbage &
the fence charges hard at whatever
rattles the chain link
& the man who runs the corner
keeps watch from upstairs
backdoor propped open with a brick.
::
Some are those that belong to the Emperor
Some are those that are trained
Some are those that, from a long way off, look like flies
::
Here they come, sifted from the dark woods, prowling & shifty.
Here they come, the mongrel ghosts of my heart.
Here they come, in folds coaxed &.
Here they come, halting—half-wild, rawboned, keen—
::
Some graze on lupine that clutch
the glaciers
& wander acres of dust
& cotton grass, the wind
a grip a bluster at the scruff of their necks
as they sniff & keep nosing through crowberry:
Those who tiptoe the rocks
& tromp the sedges
who snack on clover in the bright
of March,
Little fleece machines, little woolmakers
who clutter through the fog
who gallop across the lava fields
Those who must come in from the field now,
those who must return to the fold now,
those who must be shorn:
::
Some are those branded with the wound of steadfast longing toward
Some are suckling pigs
Some are gathered, hauled & penned
stampede of pink snouts stampede of dirty feathers
docked & unloaded & crammed
into dead space: such various prying &
no inch to scamper
& nothing good remains intact:
beak or tail
or plumage or hoof.
::
Some are those that pace in terror
Some are those that cower in shame
Some are those that tremble as if they were mad
Some are those included in this classification
::
Some are those that look like they’ve just broken a flower vase.
Some are those who rove & stomp
hoof by hoof
a lapsing trot, a lumbering
those big moony eyes
filling up the whole pasture,
they take you in.
::
Some rabbit in the gulches
& burrow by firstlight
or roost in the shallows
roost in the needle-&-thread of their apple bed warbling,
warbling.
Oh littles
full of scaffold &
clover
They come to find us
: they come to body us home 
This poem uses parts of Jorge Borges’ “Celestial Emporium of Benevolent
Knowledge’s
Taxonomy” as a framework throughout.
“the blackness goes leaking out” is Anne Carson’s, from Men in the Off Hours.
“the best representation/of the best representation” is taken from Dave Madden’s
The Authentic Animal: Inside the Odd and Obsessive World of Taxidermy.
“time that does not measure itself” is taken from Clarice Lispector’s Agua Viva.
“procession of clouds” borrows phrasing from Arecelis Girmay’s poem, “Small Letter.”
“wound of steadfast longing” comes from Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love.