Nancy Kangas
Once I hung on my wall a bear’s head –
not real, but painted plaster. I liked its grin.
Once I bought a thrift store fur coat so plush
I thought it a miracle of polyester.
One whole year later I lifted the lining.
There lay the hide real fur attaches to.
Once I herded sheep and hated them.
They scattered instead of gathered,
didn’t thread themselves through the gate
in Maine the summer I was 17.
I ran. I ran around them. Tried to be the dog.
Filled the thick August air with the cruellest words
I could think to say to sheep.
Nancy Kangas is a poet, teaching artist, and filmmaker. Her poems have been published in Plume, MAYDAY Magazine, and Bone Parade. She co-directed Preschool Poets, an animated series based on her students’ poems, and is at work on a documentary about a fractured small town and the playground they build together.
andotherpoems.com 