PANCAKES

I heard my voice
in bed beside me
and thought I was
dead, or someone

dressed as dead.
I seemed to be what
I couldn't possibly
be for a split

second and struggled
to add up to something,
if only in retrospect.
Later I had pancakes

for breakfast and wondered
what the fuss had been about.

WINDOWS


As a child she
stayed in her room
and studied a box.
When the bell rang,

she invited her mirror
to lunch. An umbrella
blossomed above her
head in wet weather.

Rose petals pretended
to bleed beneath her feet.
A telescope let her
see into the future

when she needed
to know who loved her.

NINETEEN

A nightmare rode
my sleep last night,
galloping off in
the general direction

of disarray. Arriving
there, it dismounted
and tallied up my
disappointments: a

man in love who
loves what vanishes, a
swan that disappears
into a mirror, an

ancient habit, stuck
to itself like glue.

HYPOTHETICAL

Man is a hypothetical
hole he falls into
on his way to the
finite. There was a

time, of course, when
time seemed to hold
its breath in bated
anticipation of some

purely mythical second
chance. But that was
before. This is reality,
a stone no angel can

roll back in memory
of what awaits us.

KNOWABLE

My grandfather, who once tried to figure out what the dead worry about, always slept with his future safely behind him.

THE DIFFERENCE

Though his last words
weren't famous, they
were audible to everyone
in the room and

capable of becoming
birds under the
circumstances. We
stood under those

circumstances for
as long as we could,
then continued on
down the path

most traveled by
to avoid the difference.

MAKEUP

A darkness light
can't cure hides
in the shadows
and waits. Time

waits for no man,
of course, but seems
willing enough to
wait while a woman

puts her makeup on.
Then it's time to
go (past time,
actually), and we

do, but not before double
checking our eyelids.