Peep

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”
–Kurt Vonnegut

There is a bird feeder,
where I’ve still seen no birds,
suctioned to the top
of a tree, towering, contorted
in a reflection so large the feeder
camouflages its own clarity,
leaving just seeds and a swaying
palate of branches to divebomb.

It’s sucked on the slate
cloudy pane of my neighbor’s
closet where I’ve almost seen her
changing like a clear invitation
to the airborne— she darts
as I lean back turning pages,
as I squirm and peck poems,
she flips on the switch

moving from frame to frame:
the windows like televisions
lighting and dimming: a pilot
light barely hinting at control,
the little tower still there
for birds to peak their beaks
in until they can’t bear her
staring back through the glass,

as if she has gone
back on her word.

Far Fetch

I.

Camels clomp through black
sands. The rider’s amulet
dangling notes
in the sun. Hot drums
juggle empty black
weight from long
twines reaming
at shriveled
muscles,
hinds,
many feet
below sea.
The soft mush
of the clip
clop
whispering
thirst.

Sun whips her
bright mustard
tail—rattles
pangs of light
like sauerkraut:

transparent skin
shedding off
the horizon.
Hisses in hot
clear waves:::

II.

Back in cities, fried
screens crash down
on the frozen black
drives of primetime.

Fax machines hum
our ink is no good
from slip-
wax tongues

of parchment. Nothing
to pawn now for a sip
of blue. In the city
and desert garlic

bulbs keep the circuits
charged : a heart will
wire into cloves for days
in the face of collapse.

III.

The warm dunes
grow and crescendo
in bolero before the dead
silence. Stars catch a cactus
in sharp glisten. In the sand men
torture the giver for water. Their white
camouflage gives away all green, unarmed
against darkness, and the sliced arms
pour their hot offering—the cap
of barbs tilting in the red
night: a sharp flower
dropping like a drill.

With throats
wet, two men
begin to sing

into the dry radio—
hello ruby in the dust.

Relatively Soaring

Somewhere in the fall night
of Sweden, ten men lift
off with millions, each bag
like a fat full moon
above the flashing
sirens of the bank,
and the chopper blades
blur the stars
they rise towards and forget,
becoming their own almighties,
cackling sternly in black
and drinking champagne
with gloves. And it could be
Mr. K on his ham
radio picking up
their flight course
as he scans along,
grades tests, the pilot only
abbreviating Dubai: “Bai bound,
ten aboard, and squad on site,“
but the lead falls
to silence: Mr. Kochenour
celebrating his sixty third
with a bi-annual
Coke on the stoop,
slowly adding the sugary
forbidden caffeine to an Oompa-
Loompa-orange Indian summer
high and almost
regretting instantly
the perfect sip.
And closing his eyes
to lock it into place:
lock it in
yes, this is it,
this
has to be it.

Light Speed

Your clock—
the one that’s worth
something, and the banjo
that has been in the family
a century, the cherry music
stand she had made
for your birthday,
the prototype
carbon fiber chair

you snagged
from the basement,
and lastly, the books—
ones you’ve read
or never will— bear
with me—
all condense
into a polished black

stone worth the value
of the aforementioned
bounty— in your tunnel
vision fantasy before bed.
And staring into the dreams
to come, you salivate
over the force of such

a stone, one with
the power to shuttle
you across white seas
of clay to the blue-footed
boobie diving arches
of a dank mine,
where, trapped
behind a black cloud

of earth, is a man, grappling
with the night’s almighty prism.

It’s Not Farrah

Bleached and bronzed, you
tremble. At the thought of end.
At the flashbulb’s final pop.

At the poster’s tear
across that smile. At the cheek
and taut neck to be left there

for someday’s grandsons
to find in cellars and commit
deeds of adolescent chemistry

in stealthy hours: the angel-
white tissue wadding up
in the rubbish with each

quick, youthful sigh. You
icon. You sexpot.  You
tremble—

bedpan still as glass.
Nipples hardening one
last time, to diamond.

In Reverse

I’m not the type of person
who would try to make everyone
I see in one day smile,
unless, perhaps,
she was beautiful, maybe
covered in tattoos: feeling forever
starved of normal gazes, eyes
always landing just off her
black wrapped arms.

Unless, perhaps,
he was sitting silent
in a corner of town
with a book
open that I’ve read, maybe
as much as enjoyed,
and I’d ask him if Ignatius
was at the drag party in the French
Quarter with his hoops and cavalier.

Unless, perhaps,
it was my widowed
sensei hunched
uphillward in the sun
as I strode toward the lake
spotlit in a fleeting
youth, and I would bow,
remove my mask,
open my lips. I’d share that

much with them, smiling
perhaps, unless
when beyond repair
myself, the world
refused to pick me like a seed
to bury deep in the spring mud.