Augusta Funk

OKLAHOMA

Architecture of night leaves and branches
revealed the walls. After many hours spent in the room,
we broke open our boxes—butterflies in the shallow reeds,
       waves reflecting the stars—and watched them vanish, loose dust
shaken from the bed sheet.

Near the windows, encrusted shingles soft and blue.
And down the wire of our life
the dogs' lean
and graying bodies cast themselves out, onto the street.

       We did not hear
our names in the wind, nor the small boats rocking by the dock. Just
the trucks thundering over the state lines, the burn of metal against the moon.

Augusta Funk studied Creative Writing at Macalester College. She lives and works in Minneapolis.