My great-grandmother’s father owned a fox farm
where they bred silver foxes for coats. I’ve always meant to ask
what it was like growing up and breeding stealth,

harvesting smoke. Did their faces make lamps
where eyes should be? Were their teeth always shining, open
mouths singing a song of appetites, of hungers.

You fed them rabbits. Did they kick your arms
when you lowered them into the cage? I’ve seen rabbits’ eyes
bulge when they run across a quiet lawn. How

often did their eyes try to escape their skulls?
Did they succeed? I wonder what it might feel like to escape
when the predator is caged. I want to ask her

questions like these. I want to know about foxes
and how they die. I want to know if the spirit of the fox eats
the spirit of the rabbit, if foxes really look like smoke.