Hannah Loeb

Idaho Leftovers

 

Twice since Christmas,

older women who have loved me

imperially & at the exclusion of others

wrote that at first they found me

“eager,” warning their readers

not to misread me. So that was

a possibility? My footsteps

in the snow can mean

only one thing. The pigs know.

The lavender glow

of evening brings feed now

and feed only: with a month

to live (per James’s decree,

a different matter), Vernon’s

so big that scraps from our table,

the reason we even got the fucker,

amount to a cruel snack, almost

worse than nothing, so I let

a second shovelful of pellets rain

on his head while he froths

through the first, chewing

angrily. Is there nothing

that will make use of all,

and only, scraps? Poems

won’t -- even this one

hacks the tid bits I’m feeding it

back up & won’t swallow,

for instance, the pomegranate

I saw Petunia try. It turned her mouth

fuschia & I thought how great!

Or how I caught myself

in bed with James one morning

making a noise not unlike

the arctic moan enmeshed

with shit-cement the pigs make

when I approach the barn.

Immediately I re-remembered it

as animal abandon. But I won’t

misremember myself here: it was

culture pure, that dirty word,

if culture’s that distaste for

and reliance upon scraps,

a muted yell at the intersection of

wrecks, a selfish smell,

a pig-eye smashed

against a barn door

with the light going down

on Christmas...Well,

I can be misread after all. I’m writing

now about sex, as usual. About how

James can’t believe I’d make a noise

like a pig while fucking

so he forgets I did it, sets it

aside like a watermelon

rind and lets the pigs eat it.

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Redfish Lake

 

At elevation I borrow

Patrick’s dead wife’s puffy

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coat and Elliot’s pregnant

wife’s daypack. The PDF

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of her baby too high

in resolution’ll peel a pale

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forehead across my iPhone soon

but the little service we get

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goes to “ersatz” and cocoa mix

nutrition facts.  Patrick’s not

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the type of guy who notices

if you put the puffy

​

on the ground to serve yourself

cocoa mix, Pilar’s sure. Patrick’s

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daughter is named Piper and

camping the first summer after

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asked if the eclipse was her mother!

Marshmallows grow softer

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than the store promised they would

in lukewarm water. I don’t know.

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I breathe only

when the line is ringing & the line

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is always ringing. James whom I’m

calling might die like puffy wife and

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I might whisk the crinkled panic

of a life. You have to go until your arm

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gets sore. Making whipped cream

does its harm. If he died I’d

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fling a fiery why way down

to the shore. His face is inches

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away but sometimes more.

You can put the coat on the ground

but you dare not put it on the floor.