Your hands are nothing like the rest
of you; their grey skin autumn cold,
dead-alive beneath the surface.

    They gave me hope
    for a better you. 

 
The problem is
there are no ants

    spiders

        maggots

    in your mouth

nothing to share your meals
but a serpentine muscle
that feeds

    you alone

so you think only with your teeth

    grind everything down to nothing

and believe that in the end
a handful of bones and a perfect jaw
will be all you leave behind.
 
You see, I love

    how in the trenches of your muscles
    crawl a thousand feet    
    how in the marrow of your fingers
    breed so many lives

but when you shot that robin
left it hanging on the porch

    just to see it rot

and laughed
when I spoke of chicks growing

    hungry

I saw then how those hands
will never

    feed other mouths.