WOLF TOURS: Hunting Lesson
You will feel not terror
as you imagine or grief
but curiosity as when
the sheet lightning strobed
the sky over the prairie
and was curious as you
were to go 30 years
before seeing something
new now to be
spared the shame of
weeping sculpted to
a flower always pointing
south the bones always
set to break curious
how an ending can feel
like a season like a meal
WOLF TOURS: Day Seven
In the morning they recite the names
of their ancestors; in the evening,
poetry. They long for a rabid audience,
employ many sounds but confess
nothing. Inevitability is not order, Rodney
the tour guide reads, but the only words
she knows in their tongue are BOOKS
THANK BOOKS and she cannot fathom
the lack of applause. She forgets
this is a demonstration of masks, a series
of self-full actions, a ritual burning
of all previous memories. Rodney
has wrestled with Scarlet until late
in the night, has released her apologies
on tiny paper boats. And still her
wildness lingers, like a curse or else a gift.
Alyse Knorr is a queer poet and assistant professor of English at Regis University. She is the author of three poetry collections, a non-fiction book, and three poetry chapbooks. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, The Greensboro Review, and ZYZZYVA, among many others. She is a co-editor of Switchback Books.