Unnamed, with unfortunate affection

What if I drew your face on the mirror with sea salt
using a moistened boar bristle paintbrush, and 
after singing Harry Style’s latest, I licked it off? 
Would that be enough? I mean, for me. 

If I rode the tangerine Lotus Elise of an idea
across the Rockies, carried this pining obsession 
into swaying spheres overlooking 
the Strait of Georgia, would that 

be enough? I can never sleep, no surprise,
but neither can I eat enough sap to become resin 
against this. I’m wrestling in treehouses 
with an illusion, and I’d fuck with a worse one

for sure. Can’t I like snow and still shovel it away?
Is it wrong to eat strange plants if they’re not 
that poisonous? Isn’t that better than sitting here, 
starving to death? I’m compelled like feathers

to static, I’m tapping metal like a prayer. I’m sure 
I’ve never seen a wild potato. I don’t know 
how to convince my mouth to stop craving 
what it craves —and don’t think this is about sex: 

I want to taste the nectar of this impossibility 
in the most devoted way, and the possibility breathes 
not like a right lung, but like a left — one lobe 
absent, making room for the volume 

of what races and pangs.

Found objects: Saratoga, Wyoming

At the ranch, a warning: wolves 
arrived from Yellowstone—one horse 
already culled. I’m not yet fearless, 

but I wander through the woods,
listen to red soil rustle to thin sky 
for a month. Snow falls, and even 

moose tracks get hard to follow. 
I weave back to the cabins, wary. 
Take a whistle. Sure. But breath 

won’t stop the pack. The seven 
of swords is drawn. I already know 
what that predicts. I’m howling —

I don’t want a whistle. I want fur, 
sagebrush, wasps’ nests. I want to pulp 
and press what I can gather into paper, 

a means to write a braver future. 
There’s quartz in my pocket 
when I leave. It’s not for luck.