Monday, August 22, 2011

Plastic Horses




Your room is a forest, roots
clutching dirt the way our mom must have clutched

the table cloth when you took her car. I was combing
plastic horses and thinking how, like a horse,

or some gypsy women, you never stopped
moving. That night you called

from a pay phone in a city
that still had pay phones. I imagined you shivering

in our dad's army jacket. There was rain
of course, an orange streetlight thumping

in your mouth when you told me to get out
after high school, a white hallway

that in 1998 only existed on TV. A leaf unfurled
in my throat, and I knew I wouldn't see you

until the seed you planted shot out
my ears, a tree with leaves red

as tongues. Our mom hooked
the phone, and I lost you to a field

of plastic horses, cold
but for manes of your chopped hair.







Thursday, August 18, 2011

The Nail







1.


Hammering the roof of our barn, our grandfather smoked


the sun in buttery rolls: “I know a gypsy who made soup


from a single nail.”





2.



The red barn became a white house that became a lane


of shrinking boxes. Nails hum in the boxes. Our mom pours


the nails into bowls too hot to swallow




though you’re getting better. Your smile is a dead filly:


“It just takes practice.”




3.



You crack our bedroom wall hanging


a picture of an actor on a bent nail. The picture laughs


over your record player. The other kids use CDs


but you like feeling old




and used like the skinny book about New York


whose pages are bird wings in your back pocket.





4.


Your fingernails grow into hooks. I try not to breathe


on your scratches as they open into streams. Maybe



you’re fishing. Maybe my eyes aren’t burning


like the barn inside you, a horse galloping


over our carpet as hooves rain


like nails from the ceiling.






5.



Your record spins


in ever-tightening circles, a gypsy singing:



I’d rather be a hammer than a nail









6.




Every morning our mom sweeps


the nails from our carpet. She opens a box


and puts the nails inside. Then she opens another box


and waits.





At the bottom of the box


is a single nail.






7.



She’s waiting for you


to step inside. She wants to make nail soup—


you soup—


me soup--


our house simmers on a low boil :





“Only a gypsy can make soup


from a nail.”


Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Upon Moving to Sunset Acres (1996)




1. Arrival

The engine crimps the forest
in your ear so I hold your hand

as we step into the van.



2. Our Neighborhood

is a world at once small, a mouth
of baby teeth yawning

in the desert. Our house is like the other
houses circling the pavement, windows


facing other windows


with invisible soup
can telephone lines between our bedroom

and theirs.




3. Rain comes to Candyland

Sidewalks marshmallow our lawn, vanilla
sugars sanding pavement seas as cars lean

against curbs like beached whales. The sea
is lava, but we are

safe under our umbrella. You wave
to the kids on the opposite shore, cheeks swelling

like a soldier on the 10 o' clock news.




4. Your Memory

Our bikes rattle parking lot fences, diamond
shadows on our legs. The shopping cart

is a black horse, a dot sinking
firework horizon. Dry mouthed

we remember the forest.





5. Blanket Fort

Sleeping bags cocoon our wide-awake skin, dandelion pillows
in Cheez-It fields, a river
of Capri Sun. Blankets stretch over crooked bones

or furniture, flashlights pulsing
story book hearts. I pull my tie-dye wolf shirt
over my leggy doorknobs and smell the desert

in a single carpet fiber.



6. Want Something?

The bus comes tomorrow, they say.

The shopping cart, our dirty teardrop, chomps
his bit. He gallops into the firework horizon, ears bobbing

like TV antennae. Their mom ghosts the door:
“You kids want something?”




7. Bus

The door opens into a yellow bellied centipede.

I draw my name on the window as you read
about growing up in New York City,

a place you’ve never been.





8. Friends

“Which house is yours?”
“The white one.”
“Mine too.”



9. Mr. Kay Says

the sun is dying--
in 15 billion years the Earth

will collapse like the blue
inside our squeezing eyes. Our parents

will die before then and I guess we will
too but what scares me

is that even in a black hole
our Neighborhood will diamond the nothing:

red, blue, and green compressing
singular white.



10. Cul-de-Sac

The circle sleeps as I pop
tar bubbles, tiny planetariums collapsing

under God’s finger, which still has a scar
from the firework that burned our barn.

Your horse screamed like a vacuum
jumping sidewalk silence. Your horse died

before running from the barn, skeleton streaking
the night with a yellow bruise.

They say the circle is a Cul-de-sac,
which is a pretty word to say aloud

until I remember your horse, and our parents.



11. What You Ask Our Parents Over Dinner


“Did you die before running here?”




12. Wal-Mart

Our mom parks between lines that we cross
with shadow-eager legs, asphalt twigs snapping

mountain frost. Mountain: a dragon constipating
white light. A lanky kid

herds caterpillar carts. Sliding doors swoosh
air conditioning, skinny dads in plaid

surveying corn flakes in aviator silence,
kids orbiting Jupiter moms. You hold

our mom’s doll wrist. She can’t decide
which cerealbecause they all have

high-fructose corn syrup, which is like sugar
except fake.



13. Automatic Coupon Dispenser

Endless paper tongues, I never wanted
anything else. The green light flashes Save Now!

What are we saving?
You rip another tongue. Lives.



14. Check-Out

Our mom’s cart, a coffin
rocking paper tongues. She never decided
on a cereal but is getting me a water gun

and you a book because you hate
getting your hair wet. Car windows
reflect Mary Kay skies, a panda propped

on parking lights. The lanky kid
flashes his smiley face sticker

and frowns. From our backseat I watch
other kids in other backseats and shield my eyes

from the white mountain.






15. Acclimatized

The forest in your ear now grows
in our bedroom.

A stream bursts
from your mouth. I forget the taste

of bottled water. We ride our bed
downstairs, oceans filling carpet deserts.

Our mom looks up from empty cereal boxes:
“You kids want something?”


I hold my hand over your mouth to keep
the ocean in. My other hand scrapes your chest,

a horse-shaped space.