Last

Leaving laying

lines like bricks

one beneath the next

and then a song sometimes

creeps in, the mockingbird

shocking the night with his

trills and curlicue notes,

shrill rattlings

appropriated from car alarms

and other birds. I’ll finish this,

take off these heavy lovely

wings and return to baking,

laundry, and normal human things.

The birds won't stop

Cooped up in my chest,

my ribcage their permanent

nest, five families of finches

multiply their song.

The racket rises until

I lose my own mind.

Softer

The quiet hurts, make it softer.

The night is there and always

present, in her ears and a comb

in her hair. His fingers.

The dark is long, The stars forgot

their shine—tarnished gray marks

scattered in the sky, the black

blanket she can’t pull down to warm

her single body, the blanket that won’t

fall away, revealing light.

My fleet

Flee.

(Don't.)

Go.

(No.)

Suppose

(Yes.)

I'm supposing.

The doctor calls with my

results.

There's something foreign

hovering. The carnival's

in town.

I'm going on the ferris wheel.

And sit.

Think.

Let the pigeons, their

many gray wings,

in. And what happens?

They sing.

Praying in the Monster

No one can tell me there aren't beasts

out there waiting to eat me alive.

Monstrous creatures with big claws,

mouths a whole person could easily

live inside. Come to think of it, it might feel safe

there, in that wet dark, a place I've missed

since birth. And maybe, if I'm quiet,

and crouch near a monster molar,

he won't notice, and I can grab

an incisor whenever he swallows.

And three days later, if I stay still,

alive, the beast may stride

to my own Ninevah, spit me out,

and guarantee tomorrow.

In the antique mall or painted on a water tower

This is for finding.

It's for hiding and seeking.

This may show up in the meadow

under a cow, or hanging from fishing

twine dangled down the Merced tower.

If I could reach, I might rest these lines

on one of the soft spring clouds

or hang the words from an almond

tree, bursting with bloom. This

isn't a secret, it's a game--of the fun

variety. I'm putting poems in places

all over town. I write.

The search is on.

Egg hunt

Everywhere, new is hatching.

All over the lawn and in the bushes,

those brightly colored plastic eggs

are filled with chocolate and God,

for the children to find. I break

an egg in a bowl, stir it with a fork,

cook it in a pan. It changes

from wet to firm, and where the liquid

dissolves to, I do not know--perhaps

it's hovering with all the other invisible

things that we regularly discard,

only remembering them

when it rains or we suffer.