surprise

Turn Left


We were driving until of
course you swerved and it was
raining imperceptibly upward
from the road but also in big
intermittent Hector-spears
from the sky and you and four
tires with you swerved and it
made him laugh like a doctor
holding a needle and suddenly
the rain was shooting sideways
along the windshield and the
August wind was holding
our mouths open like screen doors.

thing about things

Happily

The wicked stepmothers are combing the premises
for split mirrors, needles, anything they can use
to crack your heart and eat it, like a nut. One
is in the kitchen, returning the ice tray to the freezer
empty. She swirls her pale drink, and the ice
cubes pop like little vertebrae. She peers
over her spectacles at the loose-leaf photo album
she's rifling through. Scene after scene she glances
at, then sends sprialing across time's dining room. Each
ignites midflight and is ash before it touches carpet.

Are you still spinning in your box, I wonder, with
your thimble made of bone? Have the children
guessed your name? The moonlight rises like a cloud
of white moths, dissipating with the cold clink of glass on glass.