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 Laurel Jenkins-Crowecoyotehead satori 1) this head of mine useful for knowing the world pointy end for eating smelling blunt end for hearing knowing yes yes 2) les and his buddy billy found this roadkilled coyote billy took the tail and les the head for the skull only how to get the rest of the head off? he buried it thinking the worms would leave him a clean skull yellow smooth and wise the blunt end gone pointy where neck muscles tie on they never get fat but they never starve this was a thing les could admire he buried it out back of the trailer where he his wife and the five boys two his and three hers lived and he went about his business until he figured the work was done the lawn was a sameness of dust with the odd plume of grass struggling up so he dug all around where and deeper than he had buried it nothing les called the boys together Ten dollars to whoever finds that coyotehead every day he came home from work and there were more holes Daddy we got anymore shovels? the boys glowed red under yellow dust striped with sweat one evening the lawn was so low it looked like the trailer had been raised all the holes had met but no coyotehead when they had parties the grownups tried to figure out what desperate critter had taken it and how it filled in the hole so neat It would about have to been another coyote is what billy said i nailed that tail to my chicken coop as a warning but them other coyotes don’t pay it no mind 3) they say Coyote got his head caught in an elk skull once some mice were having a party in there and he fell in the river when people ran to the banks to save him he cried Only the young girls I don’t want anyone else touching me two hauled him ashore by the antlers and when he jumped one her mother whacked his head with a stick and smashed off the elk skull— 4) in the stories Coyote’s always trying to beg other peoples’ medicine like white folks at a powwow they share what they know about how to live but he ends up eyeless or dead (again) or covered in (his own) shit (again) anthropologists assure us he is “not necessarily a coyote” (there’s a coyote skull on my desk but I don’t pay it no mind) 5) --instead of that yellow den the whole sky yes yes where I thought I had a head all this time |