tick feast

let's get carried away. i drive into
the pennsylvania sticks & there are
five billboards begging for blood. 
i do not have much blood & so i keep going
until a sixth sign gets me. it says,
"without you we will have to 
become pizza shops." i too have had
to open my face up for drunk midnight boys. 
i give the blood. the ticks come in their
traffic uniforms. the forest is full
of ways to be eaten & ways to eat. 
mouths inside mouths. my tongue is
a jump rope in a song about leaving.
once i came home to find myself & my dogs
covered with ticks. i spent the next hour
on my knees, harvest them from our bodies.
some had feasted, were round like 
horror blackberries. the bite marks made
constellations on our bodies. big dipper 
little dipper. big bear. little bear. there is
a tick version of myself who only has to worried
about finding someone to eat. the moon
has a bite mark. i worry about lyme disease 
& that new illness that makes it so 
you cannot eat red meat. i have only 
seen headlines & there is too much information.
i do not want to know more. give me
all the hearsay. i am so tired that i barely
want the truth anymore. i want speculation. 
i heard there's another rapture date
coming up this week. of course it will pass
with so rapture but the last time
i remember people waiting i was in high school
& my friends & i were sitting in a park
pavilion eating peach rings & covered
with ticks. i used to try to live with 
as little blood as possible back then. in some ways
i still do. we do not grow up. we grow in. 
we hold our little bucket of river. 
the last tick i removed that day i lingered on.
watched him for a few moments while
he drank before removing him. a creek of blood
trickling down my calf. the deer came to drink.