number fourteen

on Midnight.

kristen makes pancakes at midnight, wearing someone else's nightgown. the pan is ready but it's raining; the dog's outside. the raindrops are heavy and cold. perhaps she should've bothered a coat, or shoes. she comes in after the dog, entirely generous, heart-pounding. it's too warm inside. someone's left the tv on. the butter's just beginning to burn.

number thirteen

1

i am looking for you,
little consequence.
i am peeking in all of your favourite
hiding spaces, dangling my bones as bait.

2

here is a mandatory revision.
you can carry it over any hill
in your pocket; it re-inflates in water.

3

anger gets trapped
in my curls
and swells:
a drain
is a loving thing.

4

if i speak in blood tones, you'll call me crazy again,
so i make a science fiction where this is sensible:
hanging around in mirrored doorways,
a foot slips inside and out at once.

5

let me show you,
i have so much to show you.
this is a wall where i tore the paper,
where i wrote, "i am no waterfall."
where i wrote, "at all, at all, at all."

6

our eyes melt
possible poems
and i swallow them.
the day is turning.

7

yesterday, i built
clay ant houses and was not
afraid of water. today,
i wash the dishes
and stare at dust
in the air.

8

what water does
is not magical,
there is science
to support this.
we burn and rust,
step in and out
of bathtubs,
feet planted
firmly on the swell
of an ocean.

number twelve

after life sketch.

it's not even safe underground.
i wonder if you sleep better in colder dirt,

the earthworms like cold pickled jellyfish
and you a stiff and stale bread pudding.

an unappetizing mix, but is death
anyone's idea of dessert? maybe for

the very aged, crumbling blue cheese that can't
fight its own funk, slowly breaking down

the plastic container keeping its remains
fresh (as inconsistent as ever,

why do we bother preserving bodies
when we're only going to wish them

a happy decomposition) and do they
write it well, full of beetles and maggots maybe

the beautiful pearl of bone surviving for
its time to shine (in the dull glow of darkness)

i wonder if it's hard to break down the coffin door?
survive even the finale and perhaps that bit of mahogany

looks easy. though what if yours are
lazy bones, and it takes centuries to coax them to the fight,

come on come on come on, just one swift kick
and six feet of dust and you're off, dandy bones,

shaking off and reassembling your humanoid glory
(aren't skeletons strangely like robots?) from the very core

of the thing to the very outskirts of town, wandering bones,
tired old bones, crickety bones, rocking chair porch bones,

sweetly scrubbing till they shimmer, empty eye sockets
glaring, down to town hall for a good old time, dancing bones

even down below there's work to be done, that work
fire makes look so easy, under perfect conditions,

got to get ourselves back down to where we started from,
a pile of ambitionless ash, not even gasping for breath, not even in pain.

number eleven

what can a bicycle
a new story.

instead of frogs she finds a bicycle, oh lord, does it move swiftly and as if without influence
learning some lessons she'll ride over the forest not through it
the poor hungry wolf will have to stalk other lonely doorways
lost in self reflection tumble over little gnomes rounding a wide green pond
one by one they pluck flowers for a sweet song
raising their voices in frightening unison they sing
"one by one by one by one by everyone" the wolf gladly whistling along

meanwhile she lands on the other side of the forest ever gracefully, her bike basket full
in front of a castle, what's this, a moat, and firefish sparking but oh she knows better
rings the doorbell and sets a shy princess smile, why hello, and she is escorted in

untypically inside is actually a garden and she eats what she likes without fear
she swings her arms and loses her shoes in the thick grass and here
enter turbulence, one mad fairy up for a fight, shining here and over here
throwing jinxes and rotten fruit, but then a kiss and all's well again

she'll sleep under a heavy-boughed tree, or awake
a little boy pressed at her knee, what tickles, his hands cupped
and opened around a small green frog, the only thing that love is

until she happens to find a bicycle

number ten

"tut zhe"

i find his bones across the bed,
shallow sighing sleeping breaths,
best believed at morning. i wake
early, drink coffee and paint him
also across the wall. he rolls and
mumbles, "poems," a single sorry
declaration. i won't apologize. i
read the papers as my colours
destroy them--they found the last
two Romanovs, and there science
defines or kills the last faint hopes
of escape or fairy-tale endings.
there the baby boy and his sister:
their faces unprotected by jewels,
bodies corrupted by fire and acid
before time could. in this july,
i paint the 89 freckles spread over
his back, then an "x," halfway
down the stairs; our route for the
quick getaway. he coughs and i
cover my work with the story, just
one more day they might get out
alive. and he and i could be anyone.

number nine

to another
gloved murderer.

1
one comes quickly after me on my heels and i run so crookedly always looking back and thinking only about what happens after the jump
and never what it takes to make it all the way across.


2
you walk always with your shoulders squared and
held high
as if you're attached to puppet strings.
only i know better, i've seen the air between
your feet and the ground
seen the sidewalk dissolve to a dense mist
you float above--

everyone notices your eyes fixed to the sky
nobody sees you struggle not to take flight
not to sprout wings from those
proud shoulders, pulled high
your hands stretched down, begging
not to get too far above the rest of us.

sometimes,
when you have just left me
i find feathers.


3
a fog spreads from the tip of your cigarette
i don't see but don't get lost
trust fall into smoke, knowing it's nothing,
knowing i'll fall.
feel arms where there are none.
feel loved when i am not.
i hear a heartbeat, think it's yours
matching mine.

number eight

beulah's baby.

winter makes my skin transparent. i am not used
to being so exposed. but last night i dreamt
someone else's dream, and lost beulah's baby

in the wash. i tried to pretend nothing happened,
hanging the sheets and humming a cracked little
tune. but i could not find him, and through the last

sheet i saw beulah approaching. i was afraid,
closed my eyes and could feel her soft hands reaching
my neck. but instead her fingers grabbed at my

weak shoulders, i looked up and her eyes had gone wild.
oh how i loved her! my heart broke red and she,
as my mother of sorts, clasped me to her, said,

"don't--" and rocked me until my tears had subsided.
i tried to explain, and here comes thomas, with
the baby wrapped in that brilliant yellow scarf...

number seven

fire only shines so bright.

fire only shines so bright.
of only stars
maybe the sun
shines brighter than you.

over a dinner of rice and weeds
you are the candlelight
that makes the butter glisten on my fork.
you are. the moon through the window
the lights on the tree the glow of
the electric doorbell.

you buzz, buzz
and shine.

i am the darkness pulling over everynight.
oh how you make me beautiful and bright.

number six

toast.

if anything everything wanted one a hope, it would be
all that one everyone already one wished, in that
thoughts and breath stay with you, in that every one wish
stays, that every one breath lasts, and that one could
in that, want everything one wished one already has. you
magnificent, you strange, you bold and brave and full of
wishes, you changing, you lasting you everyday everything
anyone wanted, a one hope, a one wish, you everything
or anything one wished or wanted or lasted, you anything.
you magnificent.

number five

The catfish.

It fell, and aimed straight for the knees. Before
it hit the ground the room filled thigh-high
with dark grey water.
He couldn't tell where the water had come
from, but there were buckets full of shellfish
turning, to dinner.

I grabbed it in both my hands, wide, until
the fingernails were quick becoming scales.
He couldn't let go,
and the fish seemed determined to carry
me into every corner, it wriggled
and we wrestled.

And suddenly the rhythm of my gills
was matching the pulse in his fingertips
(open closed open)
--i have a somewhere else to get to, sir,
this struggle is suicide-- as he slipped
below and drowned.

number four

confessional.

the bees are swarming like crazed little cupids,
committing their strange stinging suicides.

i open the window to better their access,
letting my arm fall down over the sill,

my fingers tickling through the leaves and
thorns and blossoms of the tattered rosebush.

dirty children race home down the street,
raising a sandstorm that clouds my history.

i watch a little one, her face shiny with sweat
or tears, stop to pick an itchy scab off her knee.

her bright eyes are everywhere.
i want to call her over, to speak the words

currently caught in my throat. the bees crawl
over my fingers, and i resist the urge to make a fist.

the bees have wisened to the girl's sticky
sweet little fingers, she swats in big circles

around her head, a frantic halo that achieves nothing.
i see her grab her cheek and release a low howl,

setting off at full-speed after the others. my finger
snags on a sharp thorn and i jerk back my betrayed hand,

already swelling and tender, the guilty bees
falling through my fingers to the soft ground below.

number three

sleeping while accounting.

what stars
what tremble in the right eye
what carbonation flickering lids--

wonder where still 5 and 7 are 12,
where minus a negative
means plus positive

and a shaky blue pen writes 24,719.
i can't even do this awake.
but through falling eyelashes can count

without fingers, the numbers all reporting,
suddenly visual. even the 700
letter b's falling from

an unstiffened thumb are changeable.
i get the problem right,
as if by magic.

number two

i'm not an addict.

i'm not a poet
i haven't got
a way with words
ease of rhythm
stealth of step
i tiptoe around meanings like an awkward rhinoceros

afraid to say anything
you'd understand
and knowing
without that i'm nothing
well
not nothing
but not a poet.

number one

dear robot,
you offered to separate
your battery life.