Fall Fashion Preview at the Country Club

First we stand in line with our wine tickets, waiting
with the stay-at-homes, all talking to each other about the same shit:
she looks good/ she looks fat
her kid has a newly-invented disorder.
Who are you wearing?/ Who are you? One glass of white wine
each/ "This isn't Chippendales, ladies,"
says the MC/ then she says, "These women don't get out much boys.
Welcome to the cougar den." They howl. You howl. Three hundred women and three men.
They fill up your eyes with their lipsticked mouths howling.
The sort of mouths that leave stains on coffee cups and wine glasses.
"Slip that wedding ring in your pocket," the MC urges.
The smell of cigarette smoke from outside drifts in and it smells like burnt toast.
You imagine driving through a blinking field of windmills at night.
Robots perform surgeries now
and there is still so much future left. You really want to hold on
to your cultural heritage. Your pain is dumb.
Their pain won't stop screaming. The problem with windmills
is that they make you stop wanting other things.
Once they've filled up your eyes with their night-blinking-rows
you don't want sex or power or money or sugar.
The things you used to want make you sneeze blood.
You imagine driving through a blinking field of windmills at night.

A Wedding Dress For The Moon

As oaks we are not sightless
though we haven't got any eyes.

We are trees at night.
We are rows of night-oaks.

Night-oaks and storybook arts,
how would I ever grow without you, my love, you are princely roots

you are the Earth-diver, negotiating the soil
you are the air-bringer, oxygenating our two night-hearts

breathing and making breathable air
while the owls beat us with their old wings,

these two stalwart hearts know
the clouds are making a wedding dress for the moon.

Birds in Sunset

1
The velocity of take-off corrects my posture (upright of enemies, mine and thine)as she forwards fast and withdraws her feet. I trust female birds more. They build the nests and they lay the eggs and they get the worms. What do male birds even do? Are they the singers? The horizon line glows whitely like a break between chapters.

Chapter One: Earth
Each stick weakens her beak.
Earth is all spangled green and day-lit ocean.

Chapter Two: Sky
Everyone gets a free copy.
Every egg pushes into her back.

The eggs can't do anything. Male birds take the eggs and make bargains with snakes. I don't want to make anything. I don't want to make anything like that.

2
Clear air/ sunsetted rim/ squid-ink clouds
bruises of cotton and smoke/ laterally drifting...

The nun
(one row up)
black hair/ white hat
(called a habit)
holy bird

shrugs a white cardigan of clouds over her brown shoulders
(her white cane is scuffed silvery at the bottom)
we are flying into the sunset togehter
(even though I have not yet figured out what kind of)
bird I am.

Boost Pump In White Weather

Eight metal soldiers bind

the boost pump to the wing

the oval striated with black silver

as the lightning cuts straight down through the sky

close enough to flash the wing. There was a prairie dog

running down the grassy strip beside the plane

and as the plane sped up, she sped up

but then we took off and the prairie dog stayed.

Maybe she kept running, maybe she wished for a boost pump (whatever that is)

could she even imagine this white desert of lightning up here?

The storm and the way we are sharking through it. Above the storm there is the whitest desert

where some clouds float solo and others stick together, huddling, trying to make grey

in that sandy-silty-soup of white. Beyond there is a bright blue

and there is a vague green beneath us now, no longer a storm but land

with glittery shakes that might be lakes or perhaps huge warehouse rooftops or maybe whole cities.

We fly into a cloud mountain/ we pass plains and plateaus

A white wind shakes us/ and then we are lowered

announcements, preparations and precautions are necessary as we descend.

The plane lands, letting the speed be felt for one moment before hitting the breaks,

and out the window is the same rust-colored prairie dog

still running beside the landing strip like she’s been waiting for us

and we roar along beside her, and when we stop, she keeps going.