Open or Closed

Who will build
the hotel to house all
the souvenir

heroes stacked
against that cellar
door? That perfectly
framed cellar door. One more

time, and I could go
to heaven
where I wouldn’t care
about that pile

of bones and springs and fascia and tentacles
and fins and feet and hair and eyes.
The ones staring
past mine.

No Be Mine

I am nobody’s sculpture
to be displayed in a climate
controlled case. Or worse—

stored in an underground
vault and forgotten. I am

nobody’s monster
roaring and lethal
or grunting

and servile. I could be
Emily’s nobody.

I do
prefer toads over frogs.

I always forget the part
where you yell at my answering machine:

If you ever darken
my doorstep again,
you’ll regret it
till the day . . .

Now I remember.
Have it recorded on tape
along with the first words . . .

Not everything
you utter is
worth repeating. We all

risk becoming
self-parodies.

This isn’t some geography lesson
about North
Korean borders.

. . . you said to me
. . . you die.

Nets tangled and wet cast
shadows across a step street. An urban
torch flickers. Those narratives

get recorded large and
blotched on skyway
glass back in this middle

where below there’s tonight’s snow—
laced with diamonds—and a full moon
to guide me home.