In The Skull of a Human The World, Reckoned

Coyote finds the skull of a human, & sniffs, & puts it on.

Inside, it is the beginning of winter, a great plain, ice-white.

Out of the eyes of the skull snow ones, snow zeros. They drift & pile, whiting out the earth:

Coyote peers into an 0 in the ice: it is deep, boundless.

Inside, Coyote can see

Claire Hero

animals moving in the white, her face—

They are almost invisible, flashing in & out of sight—

White flakes sift down from the eyesockets, cover the paws, the tails.

One lands on Coyote’s tongue: the zero she carves into night when she howls. .

Zero is a placeholder: the point from which reckoning begins

0 the collar, the mouth of the trap

0 the sign the bullet leaves behind .

Her tail, through the 0, Coyote lowers, a lure:

& so she hooks them— these emptied skins, these hungers zeroized –

In The Skull of a Human The World, Reckoned

& so she draws them out to fur across this empty plain:

The pelts darken in the whiting. The bones.

& so, in the black, she reckons us up, one & one & one.