Megan Alpert
In Wolf Country

I keep giving you wolf things:
a wolf’s tooth, sold at the tourist store
a mile up the road; a few stray hairs
I found stuck to a tree; the skull

of a deer, a wolf-kill the dogs found
and licked clean. It’s the first winter
of your transition and the sickle scars
where your breasts were shine

above the locked animal your heart is.
I want to watch wolves move
through snow, smooth running, their haunches
just like I need to see the stray hairs

left on your razor and rub my cheek
against the rough place they came from.
Sorry, you say, I’ll shave again, and I watch
as you file the points down from your teeth.

My Mother, Telling Stories

Her trowel scraped
bone. My sternum
ached with
little seeds.

She patched the overlayer.
Said, Go down
into the earth,
the only

place I will not follow.
Then rose, skeletal
from my bed.
I lay

awake in the froglight.
A collection of piano
notes hung
outside.

I rode them.

_ _

Megan Alpert grew up in the suburbs of New York and since then has lived in Minnesota, China, Seattle, and now Boston. She works as an ESL teacher and has been previously published in Poet Lore and Harvard Review.

<< Back to Issue 13, 2009