A Rabbit Must Be Walking

To swallow a chicken heart whole in its glue-skinned
pericardium is to believe the pickled chill

on the way down is love. That's why I shuddered
for no reason and knew

a rabbit must be walking on my grave-its sick
cotton a white flag, a peony. Who would believe it?

The black-eyed peas I ate in the New Year brought rain,
brought a basket of dried figs back to life

as they bloated over the picnic table's cedar boards.
I believed myself at thirteen

cursed by my red hair, cursed as my aunt's
one derelict rose-varicose coral

while the rest of the bush grew white as my scalp
under lemon juice, peroxide. My hair bleaching

in its own votive light. When the moon
is slung so low it becomes a song,

shrinks the blue spruce sapling into a white dwarf
I knew the magic half of my cracked penny

sewn into the boy's left sleeve must still be there.
But the shirt must be

in a thrift store by now, to be worn by hundreds
of men who pass me on the street and must pause

under the copper weight of it. They must all love me
like something hidden, even from their view.