Phoenix, AZ

Waterfall thru colander: I’m split into a bunch of change.

The change rattles in your pockets, tickling your belly.

So I’m without belly myself. I’m ice made from steam.

Now the historian needs tinkering.

The change goes on tinkling

Like it would if it were in a novel.

He drones on about wheelchairs with legs,

But the broken hip healed months ago.

Still he tortures his host with a pale mouth.

“It should now happen that moths kiss our mothers.

They should do it on the surface of our moon

When the moon is red as menstrual blood,” he says.

That’s one construal; not the only one.

I promised you then that I would alter your sounds

Very carefully, taking my time with them:

Volume, timbre, pitch: I couldn’t.

I don’t care to differ from it anymore,

Whatever it is, whatever it happens to be.

If the world has gotten thin from mud,

Let it eat the bone too. Let it eat living hair.

Let it have what it will have.

What I’d like is the sun;

What I’d like is to shed skin;

What I’d like is for a burnt heron

To nest next to my thymus.

Then I think I would be able to speak about

Just how much can be wrung from a dollar.