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I live in the country.
In the woods.
Take a dark dirt road to find my little firebox, my tinder.
Something about “bush-hogging.”
The pastoral clogs my face and plugs me wholesale.
I do not live in the woods, really.
Joel says, You don’t live in “rural Maine.”
I live in town.
Town is where you see people who are your neighbors and sometimes want to fuck them by the bulk whole-wheat pastry flour at the Co-op.
Men think like this all the time, I’ve been told.
The roving eye. The constant cataloging.
The log, the drift, the wood.
I’ve got to get some wood going in the morning.
Start the morning with wood.
For a fire.
(Roving is the wool fluff
in clumpy strands spun straight from the wheel.
You can use it in felting:
make something with a needle,
poking it in here and here.)
Arielle Greenberg is author of Slice and Locally Made Panties, both forthcoming. She teaches at Oregon State University, Cascades.
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