The Abandonment of the Oak Burrow

I flipped over the electric bill, and
With a trembling wing, made a list of the things that
I could still call mine.
I had barely gotten to my ankles,
When the soft rustle of her feathers
Brushed the jagged oak doorframe.
We had hollowed it out together for the winter.
I didn’t look up. I blamed it on the harsh light,
Filtering in over her shoulder.
She dropped another tearful tissue near the pile
Amassing in the corner of our room.
They were like a funeral procession to the wastebasket.
I gazed and imagined that she did as well
at the mouse-tail-trophy above our bed.
The one we hunted on our first date.

She selected my favorite book from the shelf –
A violet one without a title.
She laid it out across the sunny, beaming tyranny
Of the afternoon lawn.
I began to ask her to take good care of it,
But she was already shoving the book hastily
Into her moleskin bag.
Instead, I watched a dangling leaf shiver, shake,
and tear itself from its branch.
I turned around and, hunching over my chestnut desk,
Scrawled a slow, wavering black line
Through the first item on my list.

Running out of Places we have not Been

Burglars, I thought,
Every time the clock ticked without warning.
In 1997, in the summer,
days fall off the calendar like leaves.
And I wondered like I did every morning,
Why someone would park an entire train
On a grassy lot across from a house,
or from the H. Carter Construction Co.
Which was really just a house –
One in which you must
Navigate stacks of yellowed paper
Piled on root-beer stained carpet,
To find the office.
My father, some guy I called “Dad,” sat there
Behind this desk; so full of the most frustrating things
Like pens, documents, paperclips, calculators,
And every other weapon
You might find in a businessman’s arsenal.

Repeatedly I asked for access to the train.
“No,” I was told. “It’s someone’s property.”
“Whose? And where is his key?”
No one ever knew.
Who was this lazy conductor?
Always late, never letting passengers aboard
The property express.

I crossed the street carefully,
as if wading into the ocean.
The rusting iron monster grew larger.
Even the windows were vaults.
Thick white curtains barred the slightest view.
The door on the final train car was a valve –
A bronze wheel that I knew was only just
beyond my ability to turn.
I used a branch in an attempt to pry it open
I used half the forest in an attempt to pry it open.
My hands raw, my clothes dirty,
while silhouettes hiding in the train
Laughed from the windows;
Explorers with more fortitude than I,
But less responsibility:
They turned it into suburbia.

Family (or: Biological Happenstance)

Your daughter’s arms are cigarettes, you notice,
after a long day.
Your mind has been alive one hundred and forty years;
your body only twenty-six.
And It has been twice as long since Uncle Gil, the catatonic flounder of a man,
has had a job.
You try to take him seriously but you cannot see beyond Gil’s gills.
He needs his tobacco. After all, he helped raise her
On healthy doses of smoke
and bruises.

Your mother thinks she should go to church,
Or at least be baptized in one name or another.
Gil would disagree. He has had wings all his life,
and knows a thing or two about the malice of angels.
“God is not good. We fought for years, he and I.
At the end, I nailed him back on the cross
and sent that fucker straight back to hell.”

Your job at the diner on Marlette St.
is
slow.
Since the record store burned down next door,
Everyone thinks the walls will burst into flame
between sips of coffee.
The record store now only plays the sounds of shifting ash and debris,
Which is maybe, you think, the next step for Americana:
The heartfelt soundtrack of a tract of land.

You keep trying to make the cigarettes quit your daughter
but they won’t.
Gil, always the role model,
is flying around the room, severing and collecting arms.
Having owned wings his entire life, he has a burning hatred for arms.

You retire to the crying chair you have worn down
your entire life. It has as little skin as you.
The window, open, fills the room with sky.
Nothing but happiness for you and yours.

Inaugurating the first Ballroom of Gliese 581g

Inaugurating the first Ballroom of Gliese 581g

Gregory takes another swallow of punch and
With a sort of limp flick of the wrist,
Motions for me to examine his attire.
“Picked it up yesterday. Vintage as fuck.
This is practically the Lunar Module edition.”
I stare at it with more of a glaze than a glance.
Feeling an overwhelming obligation to express interest,
I ask where he bought it from and
in the same breath,
Tell him with concern that the punch is all but gone
And that maybe he should get some more.
He furiously swims through the thin atmosphere;
A desperate missile towards the refreshment table.

In line for the restrooms, Cassandra asks why I wore flip flops
“Well, I thought it was a beach party,” I say,
Fiddling with the decorative iron valves on my suit.
“No! This is a formal ocean-side soirée,” she replies,
Pausing to maneuver her oxygen tank
Out of the chrome doorframe.

On the balcony, away from flailing elbows and rogue feet,
I run my hand over bamboo stalks, pulling one loose.
From the stage I can hear the first soft notes of
Stairway to Heaven, and like every time before
I plead with presumably my inner omnipotent deity
To make it stop.
Unlike every time before, a renewed sense of urgency
Uncoils inside me and curses each note,
each small and immaculate thing

I sail inside the ballroom,
Gregory, the valiant defender of the punch bowl,
Screams obscenities from his half-open mission specialist visor
“I love this song!”
I heave my blunt bamboo spear I’ve pulled from the Earth –
No, the Gliese – No, the planet
Uprooting the guitarist from his revered spot
and make history as the first rebel
of Gliese 581g.

For the Anniversary of the Nuclear Age

At 7:53:19 AM, the clamps release.
Pilot Y feels it in every vertebra –
the gleaming metal chassis falling, twirling;
a child’s toy dangling over a crib.

At 7:53:26, Mother N pushes for the last time.
Son X, a mess of flesh and raw humanity,
has time to breathe in the cold city air only once.
Tears from Mother N fall on his face like
a makeshift baptism.

At 7:53:28, Son X cries for an instant.
In protest? In fear? In awe?
Why not compete to outshine the sun
with brilliant atomic flare?
What could match such an immense contribution
to the altar of human progress?

At 7:53:29, Progress barrels through the roof,
the happy home reduced to fragments.
Mother N watches her heart melt with her child in the glow.

Son X dreams of what Pilot Y
teaches his own boy.
“Careful not to confuse murder and heroism, son.
One of them wears a uniform.”