Jesse Weaver

NAMES

I saw an opossum on the lawn
in the hazy summer when the mosquitoes were thick and the cold
was not there to stroll through the window panes
unimpeded by insulation.
Between the artificial dark and the queasy street lights
there was an offness about his face, distant
from the hidden crawlspaces of his eyes
and I thought he wore a cellophane mask,
was actually a cat, drunk and trundling and stupid,
clouded as the mountaintop of my head
wreathed in tobacco smoke. It is comforting
to see and name the cloud, the air
in my lungs, the smoke
in my brain. To trust it. To make it my own.

Jesse Weaver is a student of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee.