Like Rabbits
Smiling Easter bunnies? Not hardly.
MY BROTHER’S DOG FINDS A RABBIT, DEAD, ON EASTER MORNING
While my brother hides
The Easter eggs his sons will later hunt,
Beau the black Lab gets salivous
Over something in the garden—a rabbit carcass,
Which the boys would otherwise have found,
Festering in the early heat of April.
The fur of Christ split open for you.
I did not die for you, or your metaphors.
I fed a hawk, and now my spoils will feed
The flies and worms. I left a brood of kits.
My brother buried it. So we would not have to beg
For it to rise, we are glad the children did not see.
I labored to pull an epiphany from this
Like a magician who forgot to feed his hat.
THE RABBIT GOD IN ITS REPOSE
I am, as they say, Beth Cavener, “L’Amante”
I am, as they say, the One Who Fucks.
All the blessed bunnies flow from me.
I take my portion of every flower
And berry bush you plant. The tip
Of each carrot nibbled off in my name.
I am not easily dandelion,
I shield my children from the Red-Horned Hawk,
Who would drag them to its nest in the sky.
There is a burrow that will never flood,
The bluegrass throne, the seat of my kingdom.
I, the Rabbit God, have forgone
My shredded cedar bed, embracing stone,
As is my destiny as a go,
And etched the stories of my kind
From my twitching nose to my fluffy tail.
I have assumed this shape,
Made into image, perhaps
Unchanging. I am still the milk
And the honey, still the dodge
And the leap, my ears full
Of whispers from over the hill.
This is the work, this the contradiction:
Look at me look so alive.
Even as stone I know you long
To touch me, and I dare you.
Jason Gray is the author of Radiation King and Photographing Eden, as well as two chapbooks, How to Paint the Savior Dead and Adam & Eve Go to the Zoo. His poems have been featured in Poetry, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, Image, and elsewhere.