stars were huddled in the corner of the attic window
like dead sacs of spider eggs. i guarded them
while my teeth chattered until my jaw splintered
into tiny beads. with them i made a necklace
out of string i spun from clouds.
the sky was eroding them and they were nearly too high
to pull down. some of them caught and tore
on the latticework of trees; they held there
like spiderwebs. along the coast
i was followed by a lion; the ocean spat in my face
and the waves grabbed at my arms.
i fell in. i was carried past the horizon
to a cliff face; it was too smooth
for me to gain any footholds.
the lion followed into the sea and hunted buffalo underwater.
i joined it and hung my necklace in its mane.
a day later we broke through the glass surface of the water,
thoroughly drowned.

she's just a flask trapped inside a fall

from a rooftop, a pair of seagulls split into flight;
one of them swallowed the sun and fell to its death.
i picked up its pieces and rearranged them,
completing the picture.

the sky was a sheet of tin foil
wrapped around god's leftovers;
the second bird tore it open
and the stars fell out like maggots.

i tossed the corpse into the air,
and it buried its claws in the wind.
after reuniting against of surge of descending maggots,
their wings crumpled to the ground like leaves but they kept flying.

i brushed the maggots out of my hair.

like just gettin outta there is gonna get me outta this

our fingers dipped into the surface of the water
like tree branches skimming a stretch of sky.
the ground was pulsating under our feet
but the river was still and we entered it.

and i thought we wouldn't leave.
we could harvest the spears of sunlight
piercing the depths - with them,
we'd catch fish and occasionally
dolphins, with which we would sustain ourselves.
i saw the flesh between our fingers stretch into webbing,
and our toes flattened; our necks opened into gills.
after the first week we didn't want to go back,
and we developed a fear of the horizon under which we hid.

i had been mistaken.
we didn't intend to leave, but after a few minutes underwater
our mouths opened; we breathed in.
and the river wouldn't let us stay like that.
it spit us out on the opposite bank.

my heart's the long stairs

i filled balloons with all my prayers and gave them a send-off,
but my hopes are never high enough and they settled
on the ground. i took an iron to my thoughts
but even that didn't straighten them out.
my muscles wound into curlicues and
my eyes turned into funnels. it started to rain.
when noah's ark was sinking,
i helped seal the holes in the boat with scotch tape.
still it was too heavy to float.
i threw my balloons overboard and we were off;
they fell to the sea floor and burst.

remember the winter gets cold in ways you always forget

i'd painted too many coats
over the rust, and the frame collapsed; my frame
finally just gave out, nearly exploded
in a cough of green flakes and grating metal.

i had been keeping halos in the glove compartment for some time,
but i saved them for holidays. the rest of the year
i forgot about them.
my mother had similarly treated her fine china
and her children. in both cases the unused entities
had grown so accustomed to the lack of handling
that they crumbled when touched.
for a few months we hired a maid to sweep away the fragments,
but when we couldn't afford her anymore,
the pieces collected under furniture and rugs.

i lost my drive long before i broke down.
as bits of paint and rust,
i got farther on the wind than i could have ever made it
on my own. i should have fallen apart sooner.

to kill a fucking mockingbird

i could never bring myself to light any candles.
i would have brought fire down from the stars
if i weren't so intimidated by the length of the wicks.
instead i left them in the shell of a tree for some children,
the passing of a torch disguised as a gift.

i lit my curtains on fire
so my eyes could intersect the windowpanes with the efficiency of bullets.
i painted my bedroom walls with the ash.
the following morning i was assaulted
by the light that no longer collected in the curtains; i fought back
by hiding the smoke from every match i've ever lit
in the shingles of my roof. the fog reflected the light away.
it filtered through the leaves of the pines in my backyard,
and i collected it all in a basket
half-full with flowers.
i spilled the light into a lantern and kept it there
till it was all used up.
after clearing the air of smoke i wove a net out of the flowers
and gathered more light in its folds but the flowers dried up
and dropped all the light into the floorboards where it pooled in sporadic puddles
until it warped the wood panels
and disappointed me terribly.

la persistencia de memoria

i was taping reminders to the oxygen
when i was confronted by a succession of images;
the blinking red light of a video camera,
the needle of a phonograph, an open eye,
an open tongue, an open ear.
i illustrated them with a pencil on a napkin,
outlining them in the voids surrounding rips and stains.
i pinned them to the humidity in the air,
but the paper dissolved in the moisture, and i
dissolved into grief, into the voids
where i've forgotten something but don't know what.
i scratched reminders into my hands with a pen,
and the words bled through into my arteries;
i accepted the threat of ink poisoning
so that the threat of forgetting was past.
and still when lightning struck my radio,
i didn't replace it for the same reason that
i burned all my cassettes; because i didn't care to remember back that far.