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.

When Our Mom Put the Cereal in Tupperware

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.”

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.