CAST-IRON PARACHUTE
Quick zebra, lodge between me and the invisible.
Because I cannot come out tonight.
Because the invisible is terrifying and wet.
Dusk as catfish swimming in the rearview mirror.
Invisible comets pass behind the moon.
Comets fling themselves toward an absent sun.
And then this circus in my bloodstream.
It broadens musically.
I believe in my own death at least as much as I believe in love.
Laughter and clapping.
Love for lust, love for loving.
A wall of plasma crashing down.
Love, the window silver with the traces of water droplets.
I drop pebbles in the empty fishbowl.
Love, upside down and in a sink.
Is this your brain cell or the eternal light?
Master full of feathers and sand, tell me about happiness.
I have no sailboat at sunrise.
Even when starlight returns to sunlight.
When all things snap back to their origins.
Salt chasing water, the continents, the muscle tissue.
These restless shadows split.
Look how they hurl around the sundial.
Nathan Hoks
THE FLAMING BOURGEOISIE
She was waiting for the carrot delivery
when she felt the light touch of a spider
on her neck the candelabra flickered
someone pulled a gun but no one
was willing to die someone tore out
the ambassador's kidney and they felt
like children in the corner of a steelyard
there was no turning back after the whiskey
incident after the half-naked party
incident they were making lists of what
they hated when the yellow bird flew
across the flooded meadow everything soaking
in the shadows a quick fire overtook
the castle in the Rhône fire of dark
emptiness breathing itself no one said
try harder no one said take fire
to that metal mold something new
then the question of dancing under water
they hated dancing until the convertible
incident an incident with a cracked Bordeaux glass
another one with a dying fish flailing
their hands in the air ready to give in
ready to yank a string watch the attic tumble
ready to crawl from the rubble to the post office
to mail their testaments away ashamed
of the dog's bloated carcass soaking in the bathtub.
Nathan Hoks
