At the Zoo

back when i didn't select my own wardrobe,

my father took me to the zoo, mostly to show me how

miserable the world can be.

a she- wolf traced infinity in the miserable dust

inside her pathetic enclosure.

i wonder if she was waiting for someone to call.

or trying to convince herself that anything

worth longing for ( the hunt. fresh smell of snow, distant

smell of musk or smell of condensed air outside

the panting mouth of a certain gray he-wolf whose tail,

she remembered, always swung slightly further

left than right. ) never existed.

Balloon

there was once a red, heart shaped balloon,

that said goodbye to its silver, curly string

and disappeared at once into a great, grey,

distant cloud.

the day was grey and sideways rained,

from inside a car where Tom Waits

croaked with a mighty feebleness

stone. blind. love.

pitched against the rain and marching

a man ducks into a bank

not knowing about the balloon

who embarked on its journey to nowhere

a moment ago.

Cutting Class

a three-legged dog is happier than

the woman who walks him.

the creaking, panting, anxious bicycle

has yet to be broken in

from a long winter.

whatever sunlight this is, is so defined by

these things upon which it rubs,

gently its liquid body.

Blossoms

an army of white blossoms advances, retreats, advances,

retreats

on a black wet road. they weave around the wheels

of industrious, cheerful cars. (did you know Polish troops

fought German tanks on horseback?) pink blossoms, blood.

wind's foghorn desists, and blossoms cluster in piles, sheltering

one another from nightfalling rain. a giantess' hand descends

upon the blossoms, tossing them into the air, into the light of

a streetlamp, into battle again. she dances a little, but then

the giant says "i am apprehensive about everything."

the giantess replies "are you apprehensive about me?"

silence while blossoms advance, retreat, advance,

retreat.

Ghostrain

The Family. friendly fire. so and so hearts so and so,

graffiti on the inside of the Tetanus Express. 

the T.E is situated in a soft, dead, bright field. 

a witch's bad hairday (underbrush) eavesdrops over the empty windows, 

spying on a spiderweb of broken glass. one million MEs. 

dry, dead skin peels away from the rusty bones of the T.E 

revealing various layers of it was but not anymore. 

my anachronistic sister sips sam adams on the corpse of a chair in the 

dining car. she pulls her leather tighter against her 

Monroe chest, practices breaking bottles, cringing and giggling. 

"you're a vision." she says. 

there's someone coming. a couple, all smiles and tee shirts.

they are uninvited cast, intruders in an infinite film about sisters, 

so we chuck our butts, grip the rail and jump out

of the train (as if it were moving) making a beeline to the clunk-mobile, 

peeling out like Thelma and Louise. 

The Good Girl

by the age of ten she had a PHD in neurofire and ten thousand Valentine cards she folded into paper cranes that flew over the Nile, moving Moses through the reeds. 

Envelope

sometimes poems come already written

translated and translated again 

leaving only the language of 

God I don't write them. 

not always but sometimes they come in  floating 

envelopes in dreams unfolding into words

that were sanskrit, for me and about 

ecstasy and sometimes you.

when the most ancient flashlight I know of drifted across 

my linens this morning I remembered this phrase:   

I have hands on my clock for you.