I can feel pine-shaken snow
avalanche down my aorta

as his fist reshapes my cheekbone – rearranging
what is ugly, what is wrong,

just like Picasso. His bone-white
teeth bounce pearls

off the toaster. I don’t know him

or any of this: whose house

we are in, whose maple-bark knees,

whose sinew-red tooth

on the stove. I bury each one
in the garden: a row of canines, a patch

of incisors, thinking they might
turn into beanstalks. If you chopped me

at the middle you could count

the years since I was felled

on one hand.  I imagine combusting

into a rocket, sending pieces of house,
a bath of shattered glass,

his patched-leather recliner
into a blazing waltz,

as I cover the forest
with my hands. Through the window,

an evergreen stands staring
into me, piney

teeth shaping a grimace,

as a yellow-eyed fox chants

run, run, run. Later on, a breeze comes rolling
through the broken window. My bedroom

fills with sharp, green needles, spinning
inward.