• Everything is so terrifying,
• but also eyelashes
• & the tiny bones of words
• buried below highways.

• There is a yellow house in Delaware
• of tangled yarn & grass seeds,
• & the rice that fills the little girl’s pockets.
• The little girl raining irises,

• how a flat hand touches oak bark
• & then suddenly
• there is a new calendar
• where the old calendar
• used to be.

• Check your todo list,
• dip your cold fingers in silver
• to light the tunnel that leads
• to the blast furnace.

• The little girl holds her hands to your eyes
• & the box unfolds,
• then iris & iris.

• I count every paperclip
• that thorns
• from the calf’s fur
• as a lucky thing.

• I sit still so long
• I become kind of barky.
• And I think of saying that to you
• & I laugh.

• I write a little book
• & send it off to all the agents.
• I would like you to read it some time.
• It’s all about you.

• It’s a clean blue t-shirt,
• fresh from the dryer.

• That little girl is in the book.
• She trails rice wherever she goes.
• She’s symbolic.

• No authority of weeded fields or bulbous sockets & vice versa,
• though the rain delays be ruinous,
• though the looks you get from the locals could make of your body a stone.

• No clarinet reeds discarded behind the bathroom stall.
• No business cards with your name spelled out in smiley faces.
• No names for imaginary insects, no names at all.
• Only a tiny tomato plant growing in the eye socket of a sewing machine.

• When the old wounds heal you’ll be long gone for the family farm,
• hanging steel chairs from oak trees in hopes of bringing the factory down.
• Why do we have to turn the dirt so early in the groaning?
• Why does the dirt have the texture of a lost suitcase?

• Can you hear me? I’m that sound
• of rubber soles on the back of my throat.
• A little mouse head beneath the clean pillow.

• We end up in Bucharest, accidentally.
• We end up with our slacks shredded by the barbed wire fence.
• Out past the pastures the cows dwindle into canker sores,
• the long hair sweeps itself from the young boy’s eyes.

• Please call me. Please tell me you are all right.
• I’ve been so worried that I’ve started imagining things.
• I’ve imagined you were stuck inside the wolf’s stomach
• & no woodsman remembered to replace you with stones.

• When I think of a man holding a cigarette
• to his excavated trachea I think of how I once saw
• a red-headed woman in two consecutive commercials.

• In one she was a herpes sufferer riding rear on a tandem bike;
• in the second she sang gospel with a black woman & a Latino woman.

• Three rubber banded bunches of lavender
• sprung from a white vase atop the baby grand.

• The president looks grim on TV,
• He hunches slightly forward
• & looks into the center of the camera.
• He says “Pity begins at home.”

• He pauses, grimaces,
• "In bed."

• In a hoarse whisper he says
• “I want to kiss you
• so hard.”

• I hate to see the dead soldiers in the Hollywood blockbusters
• faintly stirring with breath.

˜

• Would you rather fold a paper napkin lengthwise
• or dip the burlap sack, squirming with kittens, into the green water?

• Would you rather hold your breath until your blood vessels burst
• or pet a sleek black horse’s shoulder?

• Is that word you’ve tattooed on your dog’s ear
• destroy or destiny?

• The world is growing smaller, the sound of the night
• simmering into itself is the sound of a tractor
• choking on another mountain lion carcass.

• I am like the plain brown bird
• renowned for nothing
• but its excruciating scarcity.

˜

• If he refuses to eat then the infirmary
• will tube his nose & force-feed him.
• If he refuses to pray the infirmary
• will shoot him up with tranquilizers.
• If he refuses to shatter the bathroom,
• then he must use the window.

˜

• Would you rather strum this out of tune guitar
• or puncture your thumb-pad with this shiny new nail?
• Would you rather fold this sheet of corrugated cardboard into a diamond
• or listen to the sun-warped cassette tape of the National Anthem?

• I have spent days trying not to open my eyes.
• The curtains twitch like screwshafts.
• The carpet whispers knots.
• The sunwarmed glass holds the city like a pillowcase.

˜

• Glass is time's inability to understand love.
• You can see right through it,
• right to the end.

• Glass is that which falls faster to the floor.
• In the distance I see a horse & carriage
• stop at a redlight. Glass is not the tightest knot.

• I woke like a salt-soaked slug
• in sweat-soaked sheets & could not remember
• if the dream about you & me
• strolling the crooked cobblestones of Mexico City
• was a dream or a memory.

• You sucked your blue Icy Pop,
• the sky looked like rain.

˜

• It’s lovely, how your glasses slip down your sweat-wet nose;
• how you wipe your red forehead with a dark blue handkerchief;
• how you rub the back of your knees after sitting on the steps
• of the wooden porch;

• how you sweep the broken glass into a pile
• but do not pick it up.