if you mix this pill with that
                                    you’ll get a purple bubble

 

of sorrow and salt
if you slick down the side of a house

 

                                    the eaves may fall
                                    yet the garden will still get planted

 

rows of camellias
lifted to the window

                                    begging to come inside
                                    trace the razed path backwards

 

until each step shatters
and breaks off

                                    each round moon        
                                    sheds a square-edged light

 

on a problem that once seemed
unsolvable but caved in

 

                                    a knot without borders
                                    harboring a burden

asking what’s the origin
of the thousand seagulls

 

                                    flying over the woman’s face
                                    as she sits in her chair and mutters

 

thinking her pet parrot
has come to cheer her on   

                                    here pretty thing he rattles

                                    off before shaking his tail

childhood: a bucket of what do you think will happen

 

of love came and found which daughter do you know

 

always testing for proof, signs of knowing

who’d be victorious before the battle had begun

 

who’d suffer under fire or hit the stake with ashes

 

crying out for mercy with bitter wounds

 

which army would be the first to cross which

 

would hide in beasts’ bellies for historians to find

 

(the men said they’d crawled in seeking food)

 

a hundred tasks to test if his predictions

 

would hold water, killing birds at a tender age

 

to see if the one he said he’d hit would make it

 

flying off in a cursed diagonal

 

or would collapse with a stroke of his arm

 

victory was less than simple, his latest burden

 

the lot of thieves, whether they’d pass with sacks

 

of valued jewels or lose their heads crying

 

for justice to the gods as his father commanded

 

teach a man to hunt and he replied I’ll bite his neck off

 

if you don’t know what’s coming don’t come near

the Oracle visits the green house of his brother
hung with plants
                        and dark-flecked ladybugs

 

                        What is the cost of our growing?
the siblings ask
                                      so reckless       so rootlessly

 

begging to revert to prior visions
                                                landed traces

 

as wood continues
            to rot from the oval grain out

 

only its eaves refusing to covet danger
                                                holding doors

 

until the locks around them cease to turn

 

a single stake keeps the yard’s blooms alive

 

                        standing them upright through 
a patient funneling

 

hothouse effects
                                      wrought with gold machines

 

honey and salt
each poured in the corners
                        of their mouths

 

turning them gleeful monsters         turtle-eyed
                                                            This is no
interpretation
            only a rumor
of striving for good
                                                trying for a god

 

                                          and yet somehow still
coming to ruin

ricocheting at the bottom of the glass

I could hear a plane drop on the rooftop of the war room
as the fine tips of wing shafts spread

 

as men's hats rose headless
in their balance (silver spooned)

 

I tallied up those who wanted to go to battle then
everyone who needed to go

 

unable to say if the weather would sway the reports
if the men still had lingering questions

 

of whether someone would keep watch over them
as they sped all too quickly into flames

 

I said if anyone should covet his mother’s neighbor
he should be silent and not leave a trace of blood

 

and yet I was shaken by my present life
how it tore my feet off (barked bleeding from the heels)

 

how without notice it swam me to the sink
although my days had once pushed me on slickly

 

numb-handed not looking out for my knees
keeping me (wing-armed swimmer) on my toes

 

back then they’d said I was stunning    
my gaze shifted to the brick outline of shadow

 

at the door (the wind grew white)
(props of the war room nailed down)

 

I practiced each day having the patience to fight
harder to turn the other and the other cheek