No one should be forced to dissect anything
but butterflies.
Those useless little fuckers get into my flowers
and I’m all like,
Get a job. Get out of here with your feet 
and your proboscis and your

wings.

The hideous demon monster baby
is thinly veiled
and wants no part of this.
I’m in fashion now, it croaks,
flashing its bad eyes
and leaving its trail of slime.
I’m in fashion now and have no time
to appear
except in visions of magazine racks
at train stations
where it can be seen
for $4 or $5 or
the price of a pack of gum
at certain ends of the earth.

I start early in the morning sometimes,
this fading of America’s
dreams,

a little tarnishing of everything
bronze,

a rattle of the camel bells
hanging from the door
to the back porch.

This was at your grandma’s house,
this memory of green Formica and chrome,
the table where you ate sliced bananas
and Cheerios

and you loved them
even though you hated
bananas.

I steal memories
and I break up houses so that
women named Pansy can take everything
and sell it.

Oh, what a beautiful morning.
Your music box is gone.

No one should have babies anymore
or win things, or do things
until I can catch up and figure out
how I’m not losing, or how not to lose more,
or how to slow the losing, how close I am to
whatever cliff this is, how not to
fall into the canyon, my feet pedaling in air.
How not to be Wile E. Coyote but less infinite,
completely destructible, being, as I am,
made of flesh awaiting its next assignment.

He seems awfully young to be doing this,
the horse with the tufted mane, dribbling a basketball
as if it contained the ends of the Earth, all the old stories.
He drinks from the fountain and returns to the court,
his hooves indenting the wood, a permanent mark
to show that he was here, so we’ll remember him
after he’s no longer breathing, at least not in this
park district gym with mats on the walls and banners
for all the other young horses before him and since.

This is how it began, the fading of
everything that was not indifferent or
did not wish to bend my foot back
as far as it would go, just to see.
This is how it began, the end of
anything hospitable and kind, so that
now when there is sand in my eyes,
no one cares. Gravel hits the rims
of the wheels I don’t have, on the car
I don’t have. This is how things get lost
or broken, just another small step before
the next hill becomes the last hill.

It’s supposed to make a plant taste so terrible,
a caterpillar would rather die than eat. I know
about this — a certain bitterness in the shape of
growth, an impediment that cannot be overcome
by will. I know how it is, to never gain wings
or undergo the painful mystery, the difficult
launch that enables any flying thing to fly.

I love my pit bull, but what are we doing here?
If I knew how to tango like this, I certainly would.
Y’all are bringing me down, down, down
like an ant to an anthill, except it’s the wrong one
and I don’t have a key or a pocket to put it in.
I love my animal instincts that keep my fingers
out of light sockets most of the time —
every time, up until now.

Put on your bedroom suit
and get on over here
with your two hips and your

hair

I’m not too tired to dance with you yet

I got new teeth, and they sang to me
like a picket fence full of birds.
I got new teeth when I signed up for old teeth.
My new teeth were not made of metal,
bone, or hide. They didn’t belong to me.
My new teeth spoke to me by clicking together.
I don’t remember what they said,
but I bet it was something good.