From “The Star Cabins”

---

Am I in your poem Mama are you there too
One moment you’re kicking off the covers

The next you’re at work and at work
You’re xeroxing a grammar quiz

Even if you don’t believe in the efficacy
Of quizzes or the ethical implications of the lesson

You don’t know anything you know
You’re merely following the rules

Which pass as knowledge even if you think
You do not do

Hush
The tigers need their sleep

Tug clean sheets
Over the mattress over the stain

Mom do the babies miss their mama
They’re dear sweet kittens oh the tiny panthers

Of our house what if our house blows down
Or burns all up when we die how do we

Find heaven I mean how do we get there
How do we find each other the clouds

Are foggy Mom if one falls down did it die
To get here I’d rather be a butterfly

Than an angel I want to land on your nose
When you sleep I will sleep

I will meet you at our spot they will
Chop you from the wolf’s warm belly

And I will meet you I won’t sleep
I will hide and seek with you

Like we practiced when we tiptoed
In the fog that night

You always
Wear your froggy boots

You never take them off
Except to sleep I never sleep except

I don’t need sleep
In winter when the baby is crying

From hunger I don’t need sleep
In summer when the crickets are singing

According to an instinct they have for song
Don’t hide I will meet you

When I get there I will get there
After dark

Fry pollack
In the cast-iron skillet

Wait dinner and we will eat
Together finally he stopped calling

But now I am a mother and it hurts
Me in a way it didn’t at the time

When I get there the leaves will have
Blown down I used to pretend they were fires

Going out if I caught them before they
Hit the lawn I don’t

Want you to go away
I will meet you on the corner

I will meet you on a tiny cloud
One that holds just us

I will meet you don’t
Look down

Do you want to come in do you
See the moon it hasn’t been

So close since you were born
The men hauled a body to the station

They said it was a body do you
See the moon she laughed too much

And I don’t like that the maid screamed
A shot rang out and more things happened

But I can’t remember what in Part II
Snoopy ties it all together he’s typing

It out on his doghouse when we wake up
The fields have gone completely pale

With frost had I heard his steps
At night would the Lone Ranger really

Shoot those men
A good death that’s quick

And over in the morning
There’s a conversation between our bodies’

Uncouth sounds you look like a fat angel
I told him the toilet bowl festooned

With strands of red-flecked phlegm
Hydrangea clouds in stark bronze gardens

The hills going beige to gold to gray
A deer stepped through them muscular

But dainty with white flashes the majesty
We see in clouds when we just lie here

A knife’s the wrong tool for the job I woke
At night to listen for you

Opening and closing the drawers
In the morning the sky’s done

Doing its thing people say they don’t
Feel like smiling

Not
Ever

The clouds do not repeat
It’s not that kind of poem

I mean nothing feels as important
As keeping the baby quiet

Shakespeare talked a lot
Of shit if you insist

The seasons are beautiful
Fine but you’re a boring person

And okay rubber glue
Me too me too I’m lost to you

I mean to who I was
Who was I before all this

Before I was
Alive did I miss you

Did you miss me when you were away
What kind of fun was that

An eagle tipped its wings back
And forth above the bluff’s long bone

Do you hear what the man is saying
In this song touch down

To sleep in your own bed and then
Teach poetry

To children is that a real
Job if you come home with

All your teeth you didn’t
Fight hard enough

I’ll pray for you people say
To console themselves do you think angels

Concern themselves
With messages from regular citizens

Do the creditors hear our prayers
It’s not a form of honest work

Is this the regular announcement
Or is something awful happening

The bass line makes this song do you
Understand the depth

Of the issue the children
Acted in the dream as children must

Never act you must be sick to think that up
O hellish humors of a mind

Pine needles score the tongue
Water swallows the shells

Around which swell an ocean
Godzilla dwells in the ocean

You melon not in the desert
The lions recline on the savanna

Gold grasses gold trees
Such gold the lions can’t relax

The pelvic floor shoves the baby
Spreads out the red wheat pennies

Rattle round a coffee can
I’m cold all day my body cracks

There’s no containment
Noodles in a foam cup soak hot broth

Rehydrated peas and carrots
Settle and regroup and settle and it isn’t

A disaster but I tell you
Elizabeth things here are getting bad

Worms overflow the basement drain
I love that you with your whole heart

Believe in poems that when we talk
We talk of them

Below the denim strips of rain
No one is no one is lost

I love I love you go away
The windshield wipers wipe the spatter

I couldn’t see a cloud
So what was there to write about