The wasp, the ocelot, and the elder go
as a group to communicate
with a far-off shadow continent.

The wasp is weighted low in the air
by the ocelot's fur; the elder
pets it raw and bald with his good hand,
holding the tithing platter in his crippled,

stood stiff on a laser-outlined sci-fi
platform on the watery hearth
of the brickless age.

His smile has the dubious fortitude
of day-old concrete. His hands
are the wings of birds
held together by wire.

WALLS OF WIRE-LINKED BIRDS
And the security camera turns
into a tight circular rainbow.
My love walks out of the money machine
towards me with a toddler ostrich
in her tiny hand, her grip
on its wrung neck. Not our kill,
but it'll do for dinner. Later
the kitchen table vibrates
under its spirit leaving
through everyone's ribcages at once.

We look at its sleepy pretty eyelids,
slowly chew the stringy meat
from its thighs. The hills
from across the streets
come rippling over the ice cream shop,
then the small-town airport,
then the glassy escape
of our rugged living room.

We're tied by a thin chicken sinew
to the national currency and the clock.
When the wet string goes dry and snaps,
we fall through the open doorways
of the mental hospital, to be surrounded
by chalk pillars with fluorescent
sausage arms, crudely attached, the heads
lost somewhere near the functionless tops.

On a path where rails were once torn up
we attacked each other with kisses
and pledged to lit streams of jet exhaust
never to abandon each other in the eye
of any storm. The grey rocks ran
with black water. Moss opened itself
to sponge the mouth, the trunks
whirled under all the blankets
of our seperate, similar memories.

Kids who jumped from sixty feet
to hit the water with their arches
sailed past insulting security guards
and we spidered under
a dim rugged ledge
to save each other from shivering.

Black moon arrived, but resembled
so closely the violet sun
that our bloodshot veined eyes
reached at the telephone trees
and the telephone branches.

Moths alit on lichens
where the water stopped
and sunlight dried
the landscape to match their wings.
We sang underneath all this;
we sang like a cave
with two deep mouths.

a frog belly landed
wet with urine
in my only hand

I felt on the edge
of a black hole
about to become destroyed information

I don't know why that afternoon
the frog's life was my own
held at an arm's length and growing closer
all other arms melted by throat-bubble
frog-voice, subtly desperate

my body breaking to bring the belly
towards throat, feeling stomach churning
in little body, now in awful sunlight I remember

the winter is too powerful
turning leaves into destroyed tears

through the window you look upon
the suffering of your horrible
fellowcreatures

the lake breaks itself
in what a relief
in what a horrible breaking

loose, turning the silver screws,
pledging each other
to eternal distress on party porches

an animal becomes lion-like
in these awful jungletimes, hurt
by the first dagger, strung up

by the last robber who would dare
disrupt the propriety of the pink
totally digital temple,

several hundred navel
eruptions.

I have a snail on the tip of each finger
as I duck below the window
on the public library's 2nd floor.
Poisonous blue light pours over the sill
and I blink beneath it, under my increasing hat.

My fingertips grow numb, the snails start to move
toward the first knuckles, the windowsill melts,
I hide in the trashcan. I shiver and the shells
make music on the garbage-streaked walls.

Then a noise at the lid, and an alien
creature smiling: the smile the most alien
part of her, her eyeglasses built into her skin,
I offer her the snails and she gobbles them up
with bittersweet little sounds,
then I produce a thin goblet of red wine

made from the poison light distilled into
this small communication, turned purple.

You took off your arms
and placed them on the table in front of me
you gave me a questioning look
with two glass eyes

you took off the wallpaper
and showed me the bugs crawling underneath
I watched helplessly
blinking my eyes in the rain of bright dust
from a frosted chandelier

I waited in the doorway watching myself
sitting in a chair by the table
looking hopefully at your stumps hoping
that another pair of arms was forthcoming

every bulb on the chandelier burst
like something worse than an accident

your glass eyes started to become wet
I hid under the table trying to open a violin case
my hands failing on the rusty clasp

You took off your glasses and sat
lightly in my heavy chair, I placed
my head in your lap, relieved to be back in the future