Bone Above Our Heart
A man slumped over a desk in an attorney’s office
is a parrot fish caught in a seaweed mass.
–Arthur Sze, “The Leaves of a Dream Are the Leaves of an Onion”
Stepping into the living room, she drops
her suit top with a soft crush. That little cloud,
me. That littler cloud, also me. Hello mountain.
Beneath the skin, more skin. Until
there’s no skin. Twelve poplars corridor.
We walk corridors. Those commercials
where a chopped in half person chugs
and the burning inside goes out.
Bark peeled, slid between the leaves.
When they painted the sun, it were a diagram.
Followed by all manner of celestial objects.
An app to identify eyes in the sky.
Say I’m likin’ this lichen once more, please,
and I may ask to kiss you. Twist
each wild strawberry. Eat
the ones that come free in your hand.
I love you even if you don’t always.
I got you something, but I don’t know if it’s the one you need. It’s called La Dolce
Vita Classic Almond Biscotti.
The sky’s down here, between our fingers.
A breeze in a black walnut tree. Videos of landslides.
Imagining planets entirely ocean,
I had to turn off the podcast.
In the postcard, something’s hovering
beside the lighthouse. Oh, it’s a smudge.
Move your faces.
If I recorded myself I could prove almost everything
I say is incorrect.
She called me honey when she handed me my Big Mac.
Can you imagine holding a bag of birds?
I say thank god that the animals once won
and my mom looks at me like a shark.
Gray seals bobbing, watching us
just offshore, as if they’re waiting for us.
They’re waiting for us to go away.
A: I get the directions wrong every time. That way’s France, right?
B: That’s South Carolina. That’s Montauk. That’s South Carolina.
The lawn, those little hands reaching.
She breathes in while speaking. Not
the gravel but the tar between each stone sticky.
Put your eye against the toy plane
to fly around the room.
Story of the hunter gored to death
by the buck he’d shot. Story of
the motorist rescuing a hare from wildfires.
Silvering the ground, a starling,
a spill of starlings at my heel.
This might be how we die, I think,
following you up the switchback. I thought
we might die, you say back at the car.
Those fragile, melon-colored flowers
beside the trail. We left each one.
Mom sued the supermarket for the soup can
that crushed her toe. Her lawyer asking her to
Please don’t speak. Stop talking. Don’t, please,
don’t speak.
C: Is that somebody with the initial L who is very close to you? Almost jumping
right out of the cup here.
D: My wife Liz?
C: Could be. [laughs] You want to watch her. She may have gone before you get
there. Everything you see in the teacup is a little picture, and imagination plays a
large part in reading tea leaves.
D: You mean it may not all be true what you’re telling me?
C: I mean none of it may be true. [laughs]
Moonface boy at Lowe’s, says he’s all
imposter syndrome, rings my four sacks of soil,
laser gun between us.
Text me a photo of your super ramen
mushroom broth with friends vegetables
Text me a photo of your flower garden.
How are the veins around your heart?
I’d eat too far from the table or with my feet
not underneath. Pull yourself in, mom would say.
Act like you’re going to stay.
Someone sits at Gate E11, recalling
cool fingers along the back of her neck.
Was El Greco the one with the dark sky above Toledo?
When I look, I feel falling.
Storm sky, night sky.
That mist around the mountain tip. Or smoke.
Searching and a video comes up: GIRL LIVING
OFF GRID BUILD THE MOST SECRET UNDERGROUND
DUGOUT SHELTER 868K views. 2 months.
Disk of grass set aside.
Her legs disappearing down a hole.
Showering, not bothering
to peel the seed husks from your soles.
E: Are you ready to order?
F: We like your tattoos.
E: Thanks. I regret all of my tattoos.
F: Why?
E: They just—you get all excited for them, then you get them and they just fade.
F: Our son just got his first one. He likes it. He got it in memory of his father.
E: This one’s in memory of my father. And I have one of Grateful Dead lyrics.
F: What’s the Grateful Dead song?
E: “Not Fade Away.”
I did not know your dog was ill.
You posted it online. You didn’t text me.
A tooth in the sky. A sea at the bottom of the ocean.
Some candy bars improve from body heat.
The kid across the street sits when it rains.
Last night when you traveled into sleep
I closed my eyes and went there with you.
Dream of a stream in a shopping mall.
Dream of a stone the size of a house.
New voicemails are not downloaded
due to data connectivity failure.
The car smells like an intermittent stream.
We have a moon roof leak. I have the duct tape.
Rub mustard oil into the medicine cabinet’s hinges.
This is me helping.
For my face, mom folded a tissue
to a point, licked the point.
Mika and Caleb, put down your utensils. You’re not using them as weapons. Not
today.
Two painters painting two ponds beside the sea.
A prop plane appears out of the fog. One painter,
That was so weird, points at the sky
with her brush. A blue heron crosses the reeds.
Oh look, a star.
It’s moving.
Oh look, a satellite.
Passing lacey stone walls along the dairy farm.
A single stone’s width. They’re built
to let the wind through without falling down.
I once carried an ostrich egg home from South Africa in my lap.
There, we let a blip through.
Dust falls on us. We’re given a hole
but no shovels to fill it again.
Our light struggles a hundred thousand years
inside the sun trying to get out.
When it does, it takes eight minutes
to land in our backyard.
A fungal network inches beneath grass,
the Norway maple communicates
with the box elder.
Last night—I can tell you now—
under each star that made it through,
I held my skull in both hands.
An equal weight of stones would feel
like an equal weight of stones.
A single cell stretches from our spine to the soil.
Fly little dragonfly. Little blue gold glaze.
When she rose from the rock cliff, left a sweat silhouette
against the stone, ash lichen, moss the color of blood.
Shaky hands. Shaky hands.
Bone above our heart. Shaky hands.
***