Masks and animals
Masks
(for AJK.)
"Aren't you uncomfortable," you asked
enjoining me to climb onto the mattress,
from on the floor where I was tying chiral
cats' cradles. Both of us were half
asleep conversing through the ceiling like
we were nine or ten, and were we ever
siblings? Where was the fabric of pain we suspended?
Where were the words that we used when god arose
in conversation, words like "wheel," "sleep,"
"antennae?" Actually, the floor was comfy
but I couldn't see your face replying.
Isn't it a cataclysmic future
all these phrases cradle when the masks
are hoisted up in ordered series of questions,
the furthest from the face unto the nearest?
Your answer works its way on out from in.
--
Animals
A firefly contained within a palm,
embedded underneath the heart-
line, dream-line, barely grasped
by the fingers themselves, glows.
A cat whose sleep has been disturbed
by the rush of an ambulance passing
again for the third time tonight
balls up on your pillow, forgiving.
A slug, however, wraps itself around
a chunk of pyrite. I wonder if
in hopes of sucking out imagined salt
from in between the cloven outgrowths.
Orchids fall asleep. A turtle shell
inverts over millennia, becoming sand.
Although the taste of meat may leave
my mouth, my teeth incorporate the calcium.