2 Poems

This childhood I built from made-up memories

with their failures & bent blades

                        of grass, light dividing

tree canopy from tree root, little growth, secondhand

stars on the surface of lakes. First I had to

                        recognize what’s still missing

from my face. The rest was inference.

I constructed a carousel of father figures

                        material & imagined forever

in the garage rebuilding old cars & arks.

A mother’s intimacy implied. Nothing

                        real enough to hold

up like a thumb to block out the impossibly

big sun. I added a flatbed with all the tools

                        taken out, a road paved free

of bump & crash, rifle crack, river bruise, mountain

bruise, the violent language of blue

                        breaking into a green field.

A history that likely never happened to justify my hands.

Axe-hewn, storm-shivered, a single trembling elm

                        touching its forehead to a pliant earth.

Know this: Copernicus was wrong;

we are each centers of our universes.

The world orbits the worlds we invent

each day anew. To give us somewhere

to call home, the earth adjusts, & the sky.

To give us something to move through,

calendar, atlas, histories, eternity.

It is already tomorrow & here in this desert

great green towers, spined & furious,

eternal, edible: a body among bodies.

We are thirsty. The sun spits & sizzles.

See how simple it is to slice and drink.

See how good it feels to believe the world

will burn all her skin off in solidarity.