Tooth and tooth

Baboon

They come,

they mate; it’s ugly.

A circle of apes.

An eight of many brown apes

around the white naked points of the tents.

In the corner of the tent are fine pieces of art, fine things.

A candelabrum melts, or the sand crawls up it.

The racket!

Inside the tents, the howls thud like food.

We need more room in our mouths.

The chef makes Eucharist of the food,

threading his hairs into the meats.

It’s his only way.

The watchman in his tall tower

worries:

Every day he must make his yo-yo string

a little tighter.

Heaven Is Us Being a Flower Together

HEAVEN IS US BEING A FLOWER TOGETHER

Victoria, I think death comes at blindness.

I think pupils are sails

and death is when the wind goes slack.

Winter, by being so white,

is trying to talk to me—

closing communicated to one who sees death

as white worms

riddling the apple of the eye.

You think death comes at the cessation of touch.

You are a flower bulb

that can feel even in winter earth.

The cold is a line that will not bend,

drawn through you foot to head.

Heat is a planet

fleeing its own cold line.

I have written this poem inside of you.

I am clutched in with your mother blood,

feeling your bends in the dark,

becoming a soft bend in your body.

We are becoming a bulb

in the ground of the living,

in the winter of being alive.

Afternoon

AFTERNOON

When I was about to die

my body lit up

like when I leave my house

without my wallet.

What am I missing? I ask,

patting my chest

pocket.

And I am missing everything living

that won’t come with me

into this sunny afternoon

—my body lights up for life

like all the wishes being granted in a fountain

at the same instant—

all the coins burning the fountain dry—

and I give my breath

to a small, bird-shaped pipe.

In the distance, behind several voices

haggling, I hear a sound like heads

clicking together. Like a game of pool

played with people by machines.

Part 4

4

Second Dream

SECOND DREAM

I hold my face

in the bed.

Me: What is my future?

Shon: Flowers. You are marrying flowers.

Plush Bunny

PLUSH BUNNY

My poor little future,

you could practically fit in a shoebox

like the one I kept ’pecial bunny in

when I decided I was too old to sleep with her.

I’d put a lid on the box every night.

I knew she couldn’t breathe—she was stuffed,

but I thought she’d like the dark, the quiet.

She had eyes, I could see them.

They were two stitches. My future has eyes,

for a while. Then my future has stitches,

like ’pecial’s. Then cool cotton, like her guts.

Of course there is another world. But it is not elsewhere.