i called it myself

in negative, as when I saw

my shadow & believed myself

a tree. The dog that thinks it's a horse still winces

at the horse, laps the steam

rising off its hide in the morning, huffs

into the feed, poses its body

like a dancer. Not a door

but a painting of a door, I placed

my negative on a branch so I could call it

my bird, watching it sweat

in silence, an unspoken rule for the fat

of July, when every exterior

is intolerable, though of course pruned

by my own shears.

Peeks Orion can't decide on a name. Their poems have appeared in or are forthcoming with Guesthouse, Volume Poetry, DIAGRAM, and The Columbia Review.