everyone else out on a trip,

but the child remains in the familiar bed,

feeling old lumps like new

in the mattress—the lights off—

not sleeping, for who can sleep

with the promise of a world beyond the door?

*

That night the child dreams

he’s inside the box.

It’s burning hot, the heat coming

from bugs and worms

raping and devouring one another.

He starts the hard work

of the imagination,

learning to minister to the new dream.

Perhaps all that’s needed is a little rain—

for everyone to drink and have a bath.

Outside: a car humming,

somewhere, his mother’s singing.

The Vacuum Planet of the Pee Pee Priestess

THE VACUUM PLANET OF THE PEE PEE PRIESTESS

Every day a chicken dies so that my mom may live:

their corpses, a tide; her teeth, beheaded cliffs;

her gums, the rubber blades of heaven.

Deeper in her, vagrants

made of shadow

pack the city of her body.

I’m a little bum in there who says

I’m alone instead of other people.

Panic is a complicated city

fed exclusively on chicken.

Turn on the fan.

Steaming chicken spins it.

Flip the light and a geyser of neck

blood will force open your pupils.

All my shadowy friends are memories from her brain.

I am solid and pink and come from the egg in her stomach.

I was lonely for a pink person

who doesn’t think exactly like my mom,

so I headed north

to the place where her brain

moans chilly

and low, like lightning that wants to stay.

I hear my own voice, in the moaning,

from the world beyond:

The Blimp

THE BLIMP

I thought above my head there was a blimp

and it trailed hoses covered in tacks,

some of which inhaled

and some of which blew air.

And I thought the blimp was fate

and the shadow it cast

was fate’s decision that I stay

in shadow. And I thought the world

was growing craggy: everywhere illuminated

with white chalk,

but the shadow went down,

down, and I was in a wheelchair

riding down and my body was swelling,

my stomach and limbs

swelling, and I was asked to describe

some letters scratched on the wall

but making sense of them

was difficult, so I loved them, like mother,

and many years later, in the spreading

serenity, there was no place for this

as there is never a place

for struggle in a living room

where someone is pouring you ice water

in exchange for grateful silence you

learn to love.

The End

THE END

The moon was dark

like it had taken too many pills

to produce light.

The earth fell apart

into pockets,

the many things in it

noticing where they were, and surfacing.

Heaven was a vacuum—

the earth, a dirty carpet.

What is there to say?

All the animals went blind:

the pigs out in the countryside,