Cate Peebles

 

NOSEBLEED APOCRYPHA

YONDER
TO THE MAN SELLING WIND-UP FINCHES ON THE BEACH IN TEL AVIV

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOSEBLEED APOCRYPHA

 

Compose yourself.  I am.

Crack one molar open

and what do you find?

The floor-plans for Atlantis

in an ice cube, all nonchalant 

at the bottom of your glass.

There: now you see. Now we

play chess. ThatÕs the plan.

Evasion has such slight and fine

boned hands. Because bridges

are for the spineless, I draw

a line from Tombstone

to Babylon, and skip

across it on tip-toe.

                         

 

 

This morning I leave the house

dressed as you: shoes, pants,

argyle everything. Nothing fits.

Out the door, I fumble

fabric folds for spare poker chips

and a parachute, squinting.

To paraphrase the toothache:

I want to stop chewing on ice-picks. 

Here, see, on the back of this receipt

IÕve drafted a diagram of the fat

red fist of an infantÕs scream

echoing and distinctly Himalayan;

I am here and people stare and

there will never be much more to say

than that. I stop on the sidewalk

and turn around beside a pile of kicked

out, parrot kissed cages

and climb inside. To show

I mean no harm, I bend the bars,

twist a new mirror frame

and a fork to tune the dusk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YONDER

 

IÕll tell you a thing or two about zooming.

Quietly, perhaps, but IÕve never fit in a carry-on,

nor found a place in my heart for pockets

 

with zippers. Tilt-a-whirl takes all. A travelerÕs

catastrophe. Quietly, certainly: over the wireless

came cries of mimicry, which turned out to be

 

the quartz rudder of our sloop snagging

an ice-field.  My record of mounting

distractions is mounting a reconstruction

 

of ShackletonÕs last bath: the tub takes a frosty

turn. A polar apostrophe where floe splits

from floe—the chill whispers, Stranger,

 

what marvelous disaster is this?  Someone

is angry, someone else is still bald. No one

remembered his tea-ball. We are adrift,

 

Sir, and adrift is a drift is a drift.

Snap to.  Eyes on me: standing starboard

on the CaptainÕs Deck, IÕm the odd biped out

 

at the creationist orgy. So hard to tell one

Godhead from another. In a year that is mad

in its nappy, and unfit for glorious demise,

 

I shimmy in, dressed as lady-sans-leaf-

in-seashell, who, at twelve oÕ one,

strips into a gorilla suit and raves about figs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TO THE MAN SELLING WIND-UP FINCHES ON THE BEACH IN TEL AVIV

 

After I have walked from

shoreline to upturned umbrella

 

and back again without touching

the sun, I will consider the thinness

 

of things and how easy it would be

to walk away from face-to-face forever.

 

Grant me plastic toggles and a rubber-

band spun life-span without any

 

consideration for where anyone has ever

been, or never, their guide books, their opinions

 

of kumquat jam; grant me aluminum fuselage

and desire the shade of cellophane.  No need

 

to stay in for the night or stay

awake until there are no more middle

 

names for the hypothetically existent

to extract from wallpaper and catcalls.

 

Nightlights twisted and tossed. Winding

sheets, sheets of wind; our whipping in it,

 

our cogs unwound. Hair strangles lids

and everything much too glowing; all

 

that is clear, empty, and bright does

its thing and never needs to be believed

 

in—never needed, nor lost. Steer me to

the spot where all that cuts my vision

 

is his hand-painted breast cage as it spins

into froth and sinks, treasured without a splash.