“You have to know the normal, or you will never know the abnormal.”

(Douglas Mader, “Snake Anatomy”)

“You can rewrite but not unwrite”

(Natalie Diaz, “Snake-Light”)

When I was a boy, 

my mother thumbtacked a snakeskin

in an arc over my bedroom door. 

Blessing or warning, diaphanous sleeve

to a lost arm, its four-foot length 

likely came from a king snake, the kind

that hunted rattlers in our yard,

making it safe for the dog and me to play. 

Empty, its essence still held all 

it had been. 

Eventually, it disintegrated.

Now, nearing forty, knowing what I had 

not yet learned about then, I think 

of another lost skin, unstretched, unseen, 

into which my most intimate length 

was never permitted to grow—

hoodie, headscarf, balaclava,

guardian sheath of blood and nerve—

casually severed the way she taught me

to cut the head from a rattlesnake with 

a shovel, should one stray too near

(Crotalus atrox, western diamondback,

focused only on eating gophers,

sluggish, shy, easily scared)

((Foreskin, twin to the clitoral hood,

fifteen square inches in adults, the size

of a 3x5 notecard, two Visa cards,

or one outheld human hand))

What makes a trophy? 

What makes a threat?

Sometimes I don’t think I understand 

the world at all.