take pier to mean both
support and bridge to sea
if the polar ice caps melt I know
how to swim and there
are things they’ll save from the wrecked
house lintels, cast iron
railings, timber mouldings
whatever is valuable enough
to endure I would polish
your shoes for five bucks if
I could see the money first
let five rattle change
into the empty pot leave
something familiar I only remember
to put in punctuation sometimes
but pack in the explosives it’s imperative
I wanted the moth to make it back
outside the wings were
so orange the cat is more skilled
with the winged there’s a rush
endorphins in the body occur
in the absence of awareness the heart
wants to be deranged
I will watch the unbuilding
show me explosions
and I will reassemble
HYDRAULICALLY OPERATED
When I unzip my suitcase,
toy dump trucks emerge
and grow into the size of terrifying.
They look exempt from doubt.
What is the sign for unloneliness?
I take inventory: a pair of eyeglasses and
the empty suitcase I crawl inside
to save myself from the heavy machinery.
Every time I poke my head out,
I am still being carried
along the shoreline in my own vehicle
like a piece of construction material
or a load of rubble to hoist, then deposit.
I count the mynah birds overhead
as minutes. But they are not
really mynahs. In the empty dump box, they are
not even beautiful, not exactly
birds; they are so dark and distant
on the horizon. If I could use my dump trucks
to fill in the vastness of the ocean with coal,
I would head for the small island. There would be
no gap between it and where we can stand.
VITRINE
Do not give the foxes names, I said to the lady in the metro,
lest you turn them into porcelain figures.
I was testing out a series of statements for truth-value.
The floor tiles rose to meet me like the domino effect
on rewind. It cost two dollars and fifty cents to arrive
underground and feel sick. I was not pregnant.
I asked for an architectural construct to hold this.
A better one, more of a burrow than this cavity in the ground.
I was fostering an entire ecosystem under my shirt.
Crepuscular and omnivorous, the foxes were waking inside.
Leery of tourist traps, they did not venture out but yipped
for their dinner. The lady was watching me.
I did not know what colour my belly was
but I was breathing. It will pass –
all this horrible not being here and everything.
HEARING MYNAH I HEAR MYSELF
if I split mynah’s tongue what kind
of prayer would I hear myself say
there were birds outside the window
the flock amassed they were trapped
in their feathers and watched me
clean dead bugs out of the lamp
when this string of words unravels
the mynahs will not know what to say
here I did not teach them to speak or
bear anything aloft my little electrical birds
they could have been mediators but then they were
merely here when it came time
I didn’t know how to knit the shape of them
or mend didn’t know how to make
an instrument out of duct tape
I didn’t know if I was given a tongue then
or if the mynahs were given
tongues whether we would truly understand
what they said
Here a girl makes clocks.
When the time comes,
I will make them
tick. A boy pulls up
in a blue minivan.
I will make his motor
a metronome. The girl
hears it. She drops the hands
she is trying to fasten. In time,
I will make them clatter
to the floor, land here
and rest.
Then here I will make the boy lose
a sandal in the mud. Yes.
I will make the girl fall asleep
in a field of poppies.
Yes I will
make them drown in the flood.
Yes.
THE FACTORY FACTORY
The programmer forgot to fill in
the papers about the papers about
somewhere there is a poem. It was
a minor news story. I dreamed
the factory into the dream world,
then walked by on my way to school.
How will I ever pack in time to catch the train?
My suitcase is bottomless and fits
an infinite amount of dirty underwear.
The most beautiful place in the world
is claustrophobic. A gigantic warehouse of
machinery created by us for us to create.
We scurry up wooden stairs to find
a lookout without a lookout in sight.
It continues so far beyond the small patch of sky.
We hit a giant domed ceiling somewhere …
if we could cut a hole in it
the rain would come in.
DREAM IN WHICH I AM ALLOWED TWELVE ITEMS
let me keep this shell and
line it with mucus
hung over the abalone walls
let me call abalone a house and
let it only count as one thing
count the grit to
keep me company please
allow me company let me have
sand and stone and let it only
count as one thing count a mouth
and fingernails count
days and nights as one thing
let me have a clock so I will know
when it’s time let there be enough
space even as the shell snaps shut
like an overloaded purse let me keep
the tools I have saved
needle-nosed pliers
severed bird wing
catgut sutures let them be
tools let tools count as one thing
count a spoon and scale allow me
matches to devour the hardwood floor
let me lie there
allow me antiseptic but blind me
and take away the furniture
let me not wonder let me know
only twelve things the rest
let me wreck myself
MYNAH FLIES OFF
I am giving up repetition, Dad.
I will not be able to call your name any longer.
I’m going to have to figure out something else.
I’m going to have to clip my tongue without a pattern from the
dressmaker’s.
There won’t be a lot of blood.
Someone will take me in and speak the words for me again.
It was me who clipped the bird.
It was me who tagged its feet.
The dogs trampled it on their way out.
I found it outside with its mouth open.
I screamed I’m dying but
I presented it with more immediacy than it deserved.
An egg cracks as easily as this. I’ve seen it.
But I’m still waiting to see it mend itself.
&
nbsp; In one version, they become unanaesthetized.
Blobs, crawling out of a vat, flapping look-like-wings.
Without examining the precise figures, I’d say aerodynamic.
Then they feel like a house the wind is blowing through.
I have to reconsider the title. I have to reconsider the verb enjoy.
You may discover the pool from which they are drinking is made
of styrofoam.
They will have to learn to cohabitate with facts like these.
In one version, they are rickety.
In another version, I do not build things to last anymore.
So, you are participating in my cup-stacking contest.
I’ve written some rules. Now you are stacking, rearranging, decoding,
unstacking.
In one version, you are wearing 3-d glasses.
And they are inkblots in front of you and you are in front of me and
in front of yourself.
This is a test of perception and apperception. Tell me what you see.
Hopefully, you will understand realistic. You may have to run.
In one version, they are doing violence.
I am causing them to do violence.
In another version, I am sending you off to sleep with them in a bed
too large,
under a ceiling far too large, covered with glow-sticker stars.
In one version, with a feather pillow, with a threadbare cover.
THE SUN LIBRARY
Julius Caesar burnt enemy ships
in the harbour. It may have spread
to the library by accident.
Yesterday the house shook
and buzzed inside. I said,
What the hell is going on?
And there was no one to answer.
Solar wind is just a result
of too much heat. I wanted it to be more
dramatic. The sun is so dramatic
when compared to my existence.
The 11:40 train departs,
arrives 16:17. All the time
I’m travelling, I’m at a loss
for information.
The library was the brightest
it had ever been
when the books were consumed
as firewood. It radiated
the way the sun does.
The corona is most visible
when the moon obscures the rest.
First there were ships in the harbour.
Then there were none.
What happened to the ships? I asked.
LOVE, MYNAH
think of aging faster
if ever airborne
airborne add birds
bird bird
love bird mirror myself
he thought you were a sign bird
paper bird
hanging from a ceiling fan
injured bird injured
language suffer most
suffer bird
hanging from a ceiling fan
he thought you were a sign bird
god bird why
a place beyond this place
we cannot ever know
sky bird rifles through your stuff
erase bird as quickly as he appears
yes let them pluck
themselves out of existence ask
ask why here
ask where here
ask when here
here all it is made of is
my say-so
THE CERTAINTY DREAM
The problem is coming to know in a dream. In mine
other people were sleeping and dreaming. Someone was snoring.
The problem was folded neatly over itself into an origami bird.
Tools were provided. For instance:
a limestone house, a package of straight pins
and a stone sarcophagus.
Origami is a puzzle. The creases are approximations.
The result is shapely. Certainty could be folded
into a featherless bird. Tossed into the air, it might not fly
but it might hover there for a few seconds
and shit all over the stone
before it can be shot down with pins.
It’s equally possible that the dream house is not really
a house at all, but a bird, folded stone.
The pins cause indigestion and the sarcophagus,
a built-in part of the anatomy.
The difficult part is shrinking the sarcophagus
until it’s the size of a small jewellery box,
then juggling it with the bird and the pins,
so quickly they become part of one circle
without so much as a bruise, or a pin prick or a paper cut.
Briefly, everything is not a weight in hand but airborne.
DRESS-UP DREAM
mynah morphs into crow
stands for nightingale
don’t assume abandonment
he needs a new name
not being himself anymore
if he is two
they talk at each other practicing
what they have learned they have to
talk emphatically to overcome
background noise how do they know
we dream every night build a nest
using anything available
tar paper and shingles plastic
bags pieces of fishing net
mynah paints over
his yellow eyes black changes
everything fills in the tips of his wings
he squawks like crow trying
to sound like nightingale
we sit across from crow
at the table recognize him
as mynah take from him
what we would take from mynah
ANTELOPE DREAM
There is an antelope in the dream, Sarah.
When the spy nailed him in the drive-by shooting,
we placed him here and he still stood for himself.
Sarah, I’m at our house that never was our house.
The antelope have multiplied in the backyard
while we played cards decorated with photos of antelope.
Sarah, the spy has fooled me. In the house,
antelope stink and snort but become transparent.
They look like whatever they stand in front of.
The sky is falling, Sarah. Cluck, cluck, cluck.
Our antelope are gone. You see chickens coming
out of the Black Forest where we wanted a herd.
Meaning something is missing, Sarah.
The house is empty and echoes.
Antelope eat the yellow siding, mistaking it for grass.
I laid the only quilt I had on the stripped bed, Sarah.
I left it to protect the mattress where the antelope died.
The spy was only my shadow behind me all this time.
Sarah, there is a priest in this dream of the empty house.
If it is not empty by the time you arrive, there will be a bed
and a quilt. The antelope are just sewn in.
Sarah, the priest is holding the book over your head.
If he is the antelope, he will have to wear horns.
If you are the antelope, there might be an exception.
Meaning, Sarah, we are waiting for the horsemen and the fire;
we are waiting for the antelope to speak.
DREAM IN WHICH I AM TOO BIG FOR MY MIND
what could I say about the glass box
after I realized there were holes
for breathing after holes for seeing
after the sky was all around the sky
sealed in after I realized I was not
the surprise pop-up toy after the hummingbird
was a clearwing moth after research after looking
became another form of disappointment
and after the little figurine was in my hands
after it sprung to action after it
mimed itself into
a transparent cube after I loomed above myself
after I wondered what kind of specimen I was
the one cracking myself open to see inside
the one stretched thin to hold myself shut
ONE POINT OF REFERENCE
Ascending from between twin cairns, we move cautiously, testing every step. Our sand is falling separately and the scree is what gives underfoot and the echoing fusillade is loudest. This is a travel log: a record of a record of record-keeping. The ridge is knife-edged and we crush many alpine plants to arrive where it is going to snow. It snowed. When you see sparrows circling, you know they’re lost. But when they see you, what they see is your clothes fluttering in the wind after a storm. Before and after you reached this point, you were different things: you waited for the bus, you decided to walk. It snowed throughout the afternoon. Here, we carry heavy packs. We prepare for every eventuality and sometimes we decide to leave our packs behind. When we say oh god, it is an expression and not a plea. When you see sparrows and they see you, you’re the only visible point on the snowy ground. The snow buried the multicoloured prayer flags. The icefall pours slow and constant. Roped together, we walk on water. There are crevasses and we step into some. When the rope pulls taut, we’re swinging below a slit of sky staring at ourselves frozen in the ice and we’re holding ourselves from the top on a thin rope too. The snow is the vessel. We imagine each other in the spindrift. We are blind and frozen and there are shadows on either side and they are also holding us. We gather ice. The snow ledge is crumbling here and here. This is one kind of end. This is a record of the end.