clocks dressed in rags and robes in the
enormous house neither hill nor legend when
daylight feels like wind on the windows
that are always closed behind thin
curtain at midnight there is a-
stirring in the dusty closets, the smoke
enamored toilets a little more still there
buzzes--interrupted--in foreign symbols
the note of finality, raw metals on metals, yet the movement
changes--on tops of rusted stove tops
thick with oil and blackened grain the
uneaten soup is dangerously contemplating
a push on the grotesque bottled merlot
the squid sized ants plan their meticulous
lives draw maps with their throat-long
antennae to cookie burnings and cotton swallowing
predicts the future with the plain
frayed cards and look for stars in the twirling
heat of rainy incessant dusk tell jokes about the
bodies vertical on beds in beer halls and churches
- they teeter and swell with every vertical-body-heave -
No one lives in
the enormous house or visits even or lingers in
gazes at the drooping balconies breathes into
the stagnance that will sleep through
the morning, you will sleep through every
morning--your eyes so much older dreams
of burbling butter chokes envy, you are distracted
only unwrapped in sheets
and tattered wallpaper
counting away the summer