her couch when it rains & the sound of her

breathing. Leaning over the sink,

moths powder themselves fluorescent,

she says I can have anything

once she is dead.

She tells a story of how I swallowed a wasp,

I don’t remember

but I always felt a nest building

inside me, like I was made

of paper & spit. I make small cuts in my

forearm, as if to let

something out, as if to look

inside. I patch myself with flesh-colored band-aids

& she never asks why.

Down here the walls a foot thick with slits

cut through for windows.

She stands at the top cellar step,

whistling. I smell raked grass, hear

an engine, a blade. Her teeth

float, lit by the radio dial, her shoes

line the floor of her closet,

a bodiless army ready to march.

Other Meaning

Coming home from the drive-in, asleep under

blankets in the vast backseat,

my mother full of attention to the road

& we’re all wrapped in darkness & steel. Somewhere

lost in the heart of the engine

small fires burn, pushing us away

from where we’ve been—

the 100-foot-high movie screen

& the airplane that passed through

Steve McQueen’s head. My feet stab

at my brother’s, wandering his own walled city

of sleep, suspended in an endless present,

endless protection & the low hum of static.

I remember a chair, a maroon &

velvet throne,

I fell asleep in it once

under a glacier of coats

as a party raged around me. Only later did I learn

the other meaning of maroon—

of sailors, whole families, put out to sea

in inadequate lifeboats, left to drink their own piss

& pull gulls from the sky. I open one eye

but cannot identify the tops of passing trees.

How far to home? Once

she left me on the side of the road & drove off

into the rare green earth, her taillights

fading sparks. Once she cast me out

onto the porch, naked in the snow, merely because

I said she wouldn’t dare.

The Robot Moves!

I pretend I’m afraid, carrying you

on my hip beneath the Cathedral of St. John

the Divine, past all the dead saints, the floor

dug up to lay pipe. I stop suddenly,

gasping at a darkened corner & whisper,

what was that? & your tiny hand

touches my face to soothe me

& you say, it’s alright,

there’s nothing there. As a kid

I made up a game

where I would turn into a robot,

cruel & lifeless, & it wouldn’t matter

if you were my best friend, I’d turn on you

as fast as switching off a light, I’d

come after you, no matter how much you’d plead,

I don’t want to play this game, because

something inside had turned, something

essential, that couldn’t be repaired

with words, like those days I’d come home at dusk

my mother alone at the kitchen table,

she’d look at me over her wine