Pretend Hardware Store

                                      
Down the road it flickers, its shovels
panting, its carpet samples sighing,
its hoses ready to rise from their coils
and finally, finally help us.
Somewhere in the darkness
is someone sorting.  Sort of piling
or maybe sort of stacking.

The man who owns it used to be part owl.
The color of aspirin, he shifts
in the sheets in the blue night.
He rises, goes to the window, lifts
his moon face toward something like music.

Halfway into the sky is a boy, watching.
He used to be part wolf.
"Dad," he whispers.  "Dad listen.
 Listen Dad.  You gotta help me."

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Only Nearly

Before I decided to stop talking,
I learned how to speak sentences
using my own inner workings.  "The
young lady will have the asparagus
platter," I might have said, when what
I really meant was, "And here it is,
the middle of spring."  "You're not
in touch with your center," my husband
suggested, but he talks too much.  Birds
didn't listen either.  When I said
"chickadeedeedee," I meant "tweet."
They didn't understand the significance.

My first silent morning, I tried not
to regret getting out of bed.  I looked
outside and saw that it was fall.  I had no
words for it.  A bearded farmer tossed
pumpkins into the back of an El Camino.
"Chirp," I thought to myself, the sound
of corn rising behind my ears. The nearly
visible rustlings from my throat flapped
and faded, and a duck landed, with some
difficulty, on the windowsill.

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Why I Can't Quit the Factory

If it weren't for all of these dumb
t-shirts, remote controls, broken
glasses, matted and framed posters,
coffee rings, scratched tables, and loose
hairs, I could do it.  The junk that binds
with invisible tape.  I've been described
as rheumy-eyed and bird-noised by those
who have been here for less than five years.
Those who have been here for ten
or more see me as wooden-shuttered
with a heart of knotted shoelaces.
Ten years ago I described myself as
"nearly tangible;" now I'm "blurred."

It's morning, so I set the machines
for "interim."  Outside, a bird
is looted for everything but his beak.
Nothing is made here that I couldn't make
myself.  The ocean is far away but still
audible in the back of a dream where
it can't hurt me.  Who says this is what
I want?  Littermates huddle for warmth
in the staff elevator. The lights flicker
on them and everything shuts down.
Always a new type of emergency.  Wait
for the little lamps, the intercom says.
You won't regret it.  The slick arrivals
whimper with no one to care for them
but me.  Machines stagger and when I reach
for them I see the light through my hands,
the bones as soft and pale as plastic straws.

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A Good Person

The painting shows an empty room where a man slowly materializes.  I watch from far away as he appears, first as a tiny pale bean, then with long bones and light green muscles. His head is down but rotating upward; when his eyes meet mine, his arm extends toward me into the light brown air. I walk toward him, trying to ignore the skin ripped and hanging from his ribs and the word he repeats which sounds like "scruples."  I decide to flirt so I won't show fear.  I hold my hand out and he tries to take it, his red lips mobile, his word silenced.  He reaches in his space and I reach in mine.  He appears to be in an apartment with piles of shoes materializing behind him, colors ranging from taupe to cream. I pull back because I don't know how to flirt, I only know how to listen until the other person stops talking, until our roads reappear and we can travel back to whatever it is that makes us tolerant.  The man watches as I retreat, eyes haggard but motionless.  He keeps to himself like everyone else does.  His arms will hang limply until he is reabsorbed.  I go on living in the back of my mind, where I can make the ghosts giddy with my terrible brilliance.  I don't want to be anything but what I am, a good person who is nice to people, with enough patience to haunt something as small and impenetrable as a walnut. 

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