Optic Nervousness

You should have seen the squirrels
when I got home from school today.
They were all lined up on the front porch
With their heads buried in the pumpkins,

popping up occasionally to survey
the landscape with a jerk from right
to left. The gourds had been scalped
the pumpkins, wide open like bowls

of cereal on a Saturday mourning,
the marshmallows, the TV singing
“no one should terrorize this neighborhood.”
The squirrels can’t hear a damn thing. They’re landing

planes with their frantic tails. I am terrified.
They mock me in the minivan. They’re one-
Eye-ballin’ me as I struggle to get the key in
the lock. Even the oaks begin to shake hysterically.

My phone makes that chime before it powers-down.
I put the wrong key in the lock, “SNAP!”
I attempt to escape in the minivan, but the key
to the ignition has been devoured by the lock

on my apartment door. Devoured like all of those
Pumpkinseeds! One by one teeth gnashing, fang-
vaults jutting, heads rattling like doorknobs! I think
they might have batteries lodged in their abdomens.

I think the battery is dead in the egg-van. I begin
to rake at the moon. I begin to shake with these cold
dead wires pouring from below the steering column.
The windows are tinted, but I can still see those pearly

Whites! The red coats are coming! Don’t fire, it only makes
them angry—but—wait! All I can do is wait! Wait! I will have to
wait for the cold night to creep over my shoulder,
until the owls come out and the oaks stop barking,

but, ah, that—

Silence,

And all those

owls.

All those eyes.

Trees

Skulls
When axes lick the ice,
And the splinters!
Splintering from the impact like tigers.

The water
Bubbles like orandas, like
Clay waiting for its faces
To be molded over rooftops.

A catcher’s mitt and elbows,
Sharp like fingernails,
In the bark of an aspen.
I wake up
To the grinding of bones.

Salty and fog-covered
Highway, a din from
The heath.
Two hollowed eyes
Communicate like whales.

Arthropods

There is a spider—
deep in the recess
of a bolt.

(The ants become
cryptic with eggs)

Beneath the globe—
of a streetlight
reflects a rather

familiar skeleton
on the tractor.

At dinner
my arms are still—
swollen from the bee sting.

(I can’t bury the fork)

Ceremony

I just got backhanded
Straight out the
altocumulus.
My nimbus is
Stratified,
My concentration
Creeps like poison ivy.

Into the sub-ethereal
Pines I find myself
Lined with hides.
Branches spiral
Into the damp
Cauldron of needles.


Segmented and knotty
With claw-like
Extensions,
I carve my path
To the river—

(((Ceremonial organs)))

Chthonic winds drone!

The Petting Zoo Expression

The sun extracts my spinal
fluid with the precision
of an all-in-one
camping spork.

Soon, I will shed
my turtle-box
and anthropomorphize
my ((sit dog)) and ((shake)).

No longer hide under sheets
or anticipate a chocolate
malt. (The neighborhood
eye-bangs giant telescopes).

I will begin to reinstate
my boyish bad temper
with the gaze of a
petting zookeeper.

I will admit
that I can no longer
keep my hands off
of your bicycle.

My only big-kid toy
was a hand-me-down
rusted-old-Schwinn.

I blew the tires off on the first date.

Coyotes

I never really go anywhere
on the tractor—

I am only passing through.

I often pass along
the banks of the Saint Joe
and look out onto the river—

Birds spiral into the clouds
where the water cuts the sky.

I pass by the trail
where the deer cross—

(I hear that coyotes travel
These paths as well)

Perhaps I’ve never known them
in the way that the people
here have never really known me.

They never really see me
like the coyote passing through.

Branches

*
You know that book by your bed?
The one you picked up again recently?
I have that book too.
I love it, but this time
It’s just not the same.
I get about 15 to 20 pages in
and lay it back down.

*
Morning comes
like the whirlwind of youth
and branches begin to fall
like the pages of that book
and I carry those pages away
down the road
where the deer cross
and I lay them back down.

*
And so we wade in the pages
waiting among the branches
for a new day
…a new book.
One that we can
pick up again
and hold up to the sun
and never lay it down.