5 poems

Charlotte trumble

Come As You Are

Paul and I trapped him, head cleaved clean in two, said
Paul ought to do it, said he’d seen the lights
shut off before. Calving in crabgrass humbles a man.
I’d tried cans of tuna, talking
pretty, hissing, spitting. Old tom
showed me right

what happens when you push too far, sputtering
out of his cream-soda coat, half face
of whiskers cobra-bent and rattling as Paul stooped close,
taking in tom’s sibilating
end like a priest at his metal
bedside. Done

all I could, done right as I could. Paul carried
him, gussied in my chore coat, smooth out past
sight, his whiskers like cicadas, they themselves above
like driftless heralds. Sing him gone
and don’t stop when it’s done. I don’t
want to know.

Horses are capable of latent learning

He is not a horse. There is a skankiness
stalking his thrush-tipped shoes, something you can
smell in the pilfered grass, tousled Farrah Fawcett
forelock – an owned beauty

speckled brown and scarlet
like the dapples on his hide: pores above
burlap knee-highs. The flies stand no chance
in the wake of his citrus aftershave.

Call him what he is. A name
floated between teeth like stones, 
a name thinned like his mane, pulled 
scattered proof that pain begets satisfaction.

Dolled, he nickers, long nose like
a bass line which sounds like
cheeky sweat, arms clamped and fracking
as if, faulty in love, he hips

exactly the right kind of dance, can’t resist
that squeeze of softness in his muzzle, dirt
on his side dirt in his teeth. When he goes,
my god, he’s buried deep.

Shorn

The harshest baptism
is necessity. Forgive this
design, this stripping spring.
Somehow we’ve stumbled in
to this routine: a lamb must
remain supple. What feels
like prayer, I imagine, turns
pink flesh towards the heavens,
submits wool, lanolin.
How natural to be rid
of the self in layers,
to sanctify each kink
of fiber, reconcile
the liturgy of what is
yearly, newly exposed.

Milwaukee, August 9, 2025

A raccoon floats by me
on the I-94, just east of the city
I am escaping. He floats

by me with his fur feathered
out as if he were born of this
water, as if he were waiting

for this requisite night, ours
an undoing sweet like scraps
in rainwater. Flooding, tonight

shapes the rationale broadcast 
hours too late to leave with anything 
more than what harbors

the passenger seat, a reflection 
of waves like pelage on the side
of this green truck. Plowing ahead

I pass him by, my undercarriage
causing ripples out and rising, his body
in the waves coming back down.

I see him turn, eyes lolling
among the fresh patch of foam
my tire tread has bent as if he can’t be

tempted by this urban reckoning, as if
he’s been borne before: box, chest, tub.
How many more judgements must he suffer?

How many more turns must I see
his graceless pelt perform as if to say:

The rain is too much weight.
Never look at me again.

Bad Fish

Today I wade my creep-root body down
swift in the creek bed, cultures willowed
in its verdant beck and tongue.

The weeds cup a buck with his neck strung
wide like the tendons on a harp, taut
as gut strings can hold without their pedal parts.

Why should he lie about as he does? I hear
and steady trust my body to the parallel
current, reflexive as his frame

in the weeds; my movement shifts in blindness
to his rustle-covered ribcage, though its contents lie
in anticipation, mirrored hooves splintered

like beckoning, my toes sinking beneath
the creek bed. I want to be the puckered
angle. I want release. I give in

to wren’s delight: a tuft of fur bleeds theft unwashed
in this water. My movement bears toothless as I drip
my bones to shore, beckoning like habit in the open.