singing without knowing you are singing
and sometimes you don’t even catch yourself.
Worn Book
The spine’s threads and glue coming apart
from frequent shelving, being shoved into backpacks,
tossed across rooms; the cover tarnished,
water/coffee/wine damage,
dog ears, rippled pages, stains from a petal
pressed between pages 26 and 27,
tiny crushed insects like misplaced punctuation,
damage from the book louse’s
feeding on the mould in the paper,
the mould too, of course, scribbled notes,
shards of highlighter, the slow fading
from light itself. Our fingerprints,
the oil of our hands, the oil and sweat
of our shaking, paper-cut hands.
Dear Liza
You need a flashlight to find the flashlight.
A cup of coffee to muster the energy
to get to the coffee maker. Call
the phone-repair man with your smashed
phone. Decipher the patterns in the ceiling.
The pill that takes away your fear of heights
is at the top of the ladder. I gave up everything for you,
he says. Everything that I wanted you to keep,
she says. Signing up for the fire-juggling course
requires that you have already taken
the fire-juggling course. Your face hovering
above the puzzle is an unfinished puzzle. Scattered
sky-blue pieces. A frown is a frozen ripple.
A shudder is you trying to be in two places at once.
But there’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.
Try and try, give up and try again. And give up.
I cannot say sorry until you say sorry first,
they both think. The oars to your boat are floating away.
Itch in the phantom limb. Cut flowers in the vase
with all their love-me / love-me-not petals.
You first, they both think. Please. You search
your pockets outside your locked car. Where
are they? Oh, right. In the ignition.
There they are.
Automatic Teller
The fast-cash ATM wonders why
the woman looks so sad
when it prints out
pale numbers
on a small piece of paper
after she clearly pressed yes
when offered a receipt
wonders if this is some
personal narrative
it is not privy to
through its built-in camera
the ATM’s limited view
is the lower half
of a streetlight pole
a newspaper box
updated daily
a laundromat across
the road with lopsided
hanging fluorescent lights
I’d print something better
if I could
it thinks
fortune-cookie ribbons
or
the inverse
of every news headline
I’d generate some music
if I had more
than one tone
crush that little paper
it wants to say
throw it into the air
behind you
from these winter blossoms
our city will know
something better has to be
dreamed up
go along now
there is another waiting
behind you
clutching his coat
in all this
cold swirling data
dreaming something too
Suspension
Playground with interlocking tunnels. Willows worry
their reflections in the frog pond. Little gods throw spheres,
miss as often as they catch. Coins flicker in the fountain bed,
worth exactly the feeling of wishing. Leaves in circulation.
Runners in circulation. A young girl in the shade scratches
at a scratch-and-win. Grown men with dream journals in their
back pockets wander among the birch trees. Dolphin on a spring.
Rabbit on a spring. Swings used in inventive ways. Sweethearts.
A tall woman walks an oracular greyhound. A beetle-child
hums his way home from his cello lesson. Some bright flapping
memory is caught in a tree and is also an actual thing: a kite.
What happens in real life is absorbed into dream journals.
Flocks of young soccer players aligning, dispersing. A small
god pops an empty juice box under his sneaker. Another
laughs and shouts, Angel! Angel! as his dog pulls him
by the leash through a flowerbed. Frisbee-sliced air.
Pale moon on a string. A maple drops a leaf into your hair
to get your attention. Okay, sweetheart, you’ve got it.
Then more leaves drift down toward the earth.
Blackout
The storm gathers, stirs a tree, breaks
a branch, takes out a cable, cuts the power,
quiets our fridge, watches us through the window
where we sit to eat ice cream in the dark.
You strike a match, cup the flame,
touch it to the candle’s wick.
The city is already motioning to repair
but we can’t hear it for the trees. We hope
it will take its time. Who will sit
at the piano tonight? The child
given relief from her homework. A relief
for the moment. The storm
raining