Taking my knife to the sharpener
I had to ask my brother
how do I take a knife
to the sharpener
one chance not to ruin
the flesh of this tuna I wanted
to separate the head
and dissolve the eye into
powder on my tongue I said
something about a fire worried
about dying in a fire in this club
with these people she said
“Where I come from that isn’t funny”
meaning Rhode Island
but we were in a rented house
on the Oregon Coast 
my teeth coated in the dark
with anti-fungal ointment
the label warned CALL
POISON CONTROL and I
did I was redirected
to the nearest call center
the operator asked
where I was in Maine
outside the Pacific recycled
its emergency she said
“Be calm, hon, you’re not
even the first one today
if you die today
it won’t be from this”
was her promise
breaking over a marsh
where cranes showed off
standing on one leg to touch
their toes or talons or whatever
a man walked by reeking
of gasoline and as he passed
the gasoline stayed
a woman stepped backwards
from her porch seeking
a stable place to lean the ladder
she climbed swinging
one leg over the gutter
to disappear
think of it this way:
throughout history the horse
has been an emblem of speed
even on occasion an emblem
of flight and to travel
with any quickness at all
meant trust in an animal
velocity which always arrives
with its cousin
a vision of sudden death
though when it comes to that
all anyone will talk about is the bees.

An earlier, excerpted version of this poem appeared in Big Big Wednesday.