if the church locks its door
the car gets towed
the furnace quits
your boat sinks or crows
steal everything you’ve got
this is the shelter for you

this is where they will hand you a free
christian ponder t-shirt in XXL
whether you wear that size or not

one of the former cheerleaders
will walk at you like she is on a rolling ship
she will wear a neon purple dress
that makes your head spin
whether you’ve been drinking or not
her hands will grab you
by the shirt collar and she will say
I could tell you stories about me now love
that would raise the fuckin hairs
on the back of your neck
and you’ll believe it and you’ll believe it
when she says she once wrote
two bestsellers in a row

and this is where one of the old players
with eyes swimming in sockets of clam juice
will tell you bedtime stories of broken heroes
lost chances
perfect regrets
and how packers fans secretly sell
the kind of maggoty cheese
that tries to eat your brains

sleep here on the fake green grass
beneath a glassy sky filled with fake white stars

all night long you will hear the leftover echoes
of horny people yelling skol

every now and then a bird will die
from flying into the night-colored windowpane

and by morning when you leave
everything in the city will look upside down
the earth like sky
the buildings like hallways
the hungry will look
like they’re rich
and the rich look
like they’re cold

I moved to the right and dug beside my first hole. Once it was as deep as the first, I removed the thin wall of dirt between the two holes to join them. I expanded the hole this way until it was satisfactorily wide, and roughly circular.

I deepened the hole. I dug on the left side and then I dug on the right side. I wanted the base of the hole to be flat.

When I could no longer reach the bottom from the edge, I stepped into the hole.

The dirt I tossed out of the hole formed piles. The further I dug, the larger the piles grew. The hole appeared quite deep from the inside.

After another few feet, my shovel hit something hard, and suspecting a rock or a tree-root, I tried to find the edge of the object with the shovel. Each time I tried, the shovel struck the object again, and at the same depth, as if I had come upon a floor.

I climbed out of the hole and got a spade from the shed. I used the spade to clear away the layer of dirt covering the surface. It appeared to be bone.

I climbed out of the hole and got a pickaxe and chainsaw. I splintered the bone with the pickaxe and managed to puncture it in one location. It was about four inches thick. There was no blood.

Beginning at the punctured part, I used the chainsaw to cut out a square. The section of bone fell downward into an abyss. I bent down and looked intently into the hole. I could not see inside. Getting on my knees, I stuck my head in the hole.

Once my eyes adjusted, I could make out an incredibly large picket fence. The fence extended into the darkness.

I pulled my head out of the cavity and shifted into a sitting position on the edge of the bone, letting my feet dangle inside. I placed the heels of my hands on the side of the opening. I stretched my feet out until they found a crossbeam on the fence, and shifted my weight onto it. I slowly entered the cavity.

I descended the fence like a ladder—first lowering my left foot to the next beam, and then my right. It did not shift at all under my weight.

The air was still. It was very dark.

After some time, I looked back up to the surface. The square of light had become very small. Through it I could make out the blue of the late afternoon sky. The square of blue light seemed to be hanging in a void of infinite depth.

I descended further. I did not jeopardize my balance by twisting to look around the cavity behind me. I descended further still without reaching the bottom, and then I stopped to look.

With small movements, I carefully turned enough to look around the cavity. A square of light was below me, not far out from the fence. It seemed to be very far down. It was a dull red, and it shimmered like liquid.

I reached one hand out from the fence, palm downward, wanting to see the light shine up onto my palm. I slowly waved my hand through the air to find the spot, but when I passed through it, the light vanished for a moment. I moved my hand back to be directly over it, and again it disappeared.

I wondered if the light was a reflection of the sky, now red with the light of the setting sun, off of whatever lake lay below. But neither side of my hand was lit as I held it there. I looked up, but I could not find the square of light shining through the entrance I had made. With horror, I retracted my hand. The light above immediately returned, as if it was a reflection of the light coming up from below.

I began hurrying upward, and I looked toward the light, the sky, after every new rung, praying that it would remain.

I tried to drown out my fear, but the thought that I might not return drove me into a stupor.

I realized I could not hear my own breathing. I knew I was gasping only by the feeling in my throat.

And the dull red of the evening light, which widened in view as I got closer, was fading with the approach of night. And I began to cry. The light seemed to shimmer through the water clouding my eyes.

And my groping hands grew numb as I crawled, like an infant, upward into the darkness, which swallowed all light and sound. And I mutely called out to the vanished light.

There is nothing to see in this dark world, and there is nothing to contradict the mind’s eye. In the delirium of the void imaginings become vivid and bright.

I am crawling out back, in the yard. And the dewy blades of grass shine brilliant in the late morning sun. I’d like to sink my fingers into the soil, and to feel it in my fist.

I’ve come to tell you bees, your God is dead—
no check or rein to stop you now.
A carnival, a glut awaits us all.

No hands
to empty the dripping combs
and set you to regathering.

No smoke
to calm the moiling nerves
and still the nuptial flights,

to split
and make two hives where there was one. 

  I should be dancing this,
feet and hips waggling
as I make a wide circle with my arms.
I peer into the future with my right hand over my eyes.

You might rejoice—
to you more heat is better.

But everything races faster and faster,
you work harder, wearier,

as if the pollen
gathered in bundles on your legs
were red shoes,
and though you try
you cannot not stop dancing.

He believed my lament to be a love song, the first he’d ever heard, but caterpillars are impatient creatures, so he interrupted.

“Have they gone, those beaks, those beady eyes?”

The flock was by then just a speckle on the sky, carrying away my lost Prince, who was no more than a golden fleck. Reduced from royal company to larval. I shook the tears from my petals. “I’m afraid we’re quite alone.”

Caterpillars know exactly what they want and never pretend otherwise. He emerged from behind the smaller volcano. “Sing again.”

I understood at once: even the rose’s sorrow charms. “Do not ask this of me. Don’t make me think of him again, not at sunset.”

“But the melody was sweet as a stamen, and I crawled half way around the world to understand it.”

“A grand boast for a small world. And the other caterpillars?”

“It’s their dinnertime.”

“As always. I suppose the ordinary flowers over there sing a little?”

“Never. They chatter about soil and sprinkling cans.” He crept closer. “Though they’re very kind to caterpillars.”

Brazen, these caterpillars, but forgiven, because they’re the promise of a butterfly. In all my fascinating life I’d never seen one. “Will you be very beautiful?”

“If you’re kind to me.”

The rose is ever magnanimous, but his undulation was too eager, his mandibles looked too sharp. Raising all four of my thorns I cried, “Stay back! I’ve slain tigers.”

“There are no tigers here.”

“From which you may draw your own conclusions.”

“I have. I’m hungry. You look tasty.” He hastened to me.

As darkness arched over us, there came the appalling sensation of his many crochets on my stem. “Appearances can be deceptive. For both our sakes, stop!”

If I embellished, it was in the circumstance of a ravenous progress towards my lower leaf. “I’m poisonous,” I cried into the night, “Horribly, devastatingly, excruciatingly. There is, alas, no cure for me.”

He fell away. I heard the pattering of departure without goodbye. Cold pierced my bloom. Two abandonments in one day! I listened to myself weep, wept again for the caterpillar’s perspicacity, for the melody was delicate indeed.

Woken before dawn by increasing sounds of mastication (noises which rose shall not elucidate), I found he’d lingered. The caterpillar had found a shoot, or, as he explained, another shoot, just beyond my roots.

“Baobabs,” he said, with his maxillae full. “Or maybe roses.”

Caterpillars make poor horticulturalists. There are no other roses. I am She. His victims were therefore baobabs. The Prince had been meticulous about weeding them. Though I’m naturally immune to jealousy, I’d teased him for it. It occurred to me, too late, that his daily dig had been for my benefit. Baobab shoots ignored are inevitable trees, within whose shadows I would wither.

I have a particular horror of withering. “The baobabs are delicious, I hope?”

“Everything is,” the caterpillar sighed, “Until they’re gone.”

“You graze efficiently, dear friend, if not painstakingly. But tomorrow there will be new shoots.”

“Too late. I’ve wasted my time on a love song. I’ve eaten too little, and the flowers are far away.” He curled up against my stem and closed his twelve eyes. “I’ll never fly. Sing again.”

“What will happen to you if you don’t become a butterfly?”

“Caterpillars only get one chance at happiness.”

As I turned towards the rising sun, the smaller volcano coughed. With nobody left in the world to tend it, a convulsion followed. The earth of my roots shook. I could not prevent the disaster. One of my petals, one of my perfectly placed, delightfully crimped, dewy, fragrant, beloved petals fell from my bloom and floated, with tragic grace, to the ground.

The caterpillar regarded it. “Horrible, excruciating,” he said, settling back into defeat.

In her heart, the rose expects to blossom forever, but after one petal has fallen, she knows that the others will soon follow. This I considered, watching the volcano puff out smoke rings. I could not bear to watch my pride wither on the ground around me, uncomforted, alone but for the recriminating husk of a starved bug.

“Caterpillars make poor horticulturalists,” I told him, “So you wouldn’t know that the rose has as many chances at happiness as she chooses. I’d be happy if I made the acquaintance of a butterfly. With great endeavour, a supreme triumph of will, I shall avoid poisoning you. That is why I gifted you that petal, as a sign of good intention, please do me the courtesy of enjoying it.”

The consumption of that dear petal was an agony, for, though I averted my gaze, I heard all. Singing the caterpillar’s love song, I shook most of the rest down to him, keeping barely enough for modesty. He left not a trace to mourn over, made a tickling ascent red-faced, to begin his repulsive spittle-spinning. All I endured with hardly a complaint, certainly fewer than were justified.

“Talk to me,” he said before entirely enclosed, “I’ll be listening.”

The rose does not tittle-tattle, she knows the value of a well-placed silence. She talks of herself, her anguishes and difficulties and dangers, only when circumstances demand it. She prefers to speak from the soul, of the temper of the stars and wishes on breezes. Of the last, I spared him the sulphurous details. I explained to him the intensions of each dawn and the auguring in every sunset, made vivid by the volcano’s effusions. I knew he heard, understood that he was comforted by my voice during tremors, as was I, holding my last petals in place. If once or twice I urged a swifter metamorphosis, it was out of regard for his safety, not the rose’s.

Aside from the glistening, which is a matter of taste, he was beautiful, though his colours approached excess, he was beautiful, despite inky limbs and twitching appendages, beautiful. In a quite different way to the rose.

“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, butterfly.”

“Dear rose, we’re hardly strangers.”

“I hope you’ll overlook my appearance. It rains dust today.”

“Don’t be embarrassed.”

“How could I not be, when your grace is beyond the reach of art?”

“Because you have been brave and kind. The kindest flower in the world.”

“A small compliment in such a small world.”

“Because, dear rose, a part of me is you.”

I know the value of a well-placed silence.

Ash fell upon the butterfly, and at last he observed the volcano’s fractures, the billowing steam and smoke stacked above.

“When it erupts, as surely it must, which way do you think the molten rock will flow?”

“What does the dawn say?” He fluttered about me.

It was a pleasant sensation, if wistfully so. A butterfly is a caterpillar who has the exact thing he wanted, and has found that instead of happiness, doubt results. “I flew once, as a seed, though it felt more like falling. The rose does not fly. She holds tight to her rightful place. You must go.”

“The song,” he said, “I understand it now. I know what it means.”

But butterflies, like Princes, are creatures of impulse. Away he flew.

Perhaps he’ll bring the Prince back, or a sweep or a fireman, or an elephant with a trunk full of water. No matter. The rose is not afraid of ashes. I tell you, laughing stars, she’s not afraid of anything.

They say that children grow faster in the springtime.
It’s October and I have grown a few thousand feet.
In space you cannot cry because there is no gravity to make the tears flow.
Every year the arches of my feet cramp and burn like my first droplets of vodka
but it is an easier remix every time.
There are more ways to shuffle a deck of cards than there are atoms on earth.
The hiking stairs’ arthritic backs rise into the distance like joggers.
On average, two newborns will be given to the wrong parents every day.
Conversing ghosts pass with eyes like used cigarettes as sweat leaks down my
armpits.
A dragonfly has a lifespan of twenty-four hours.
I have climbed for one-twelfth of a life.
Watching suffering is a type of voyeurism.
It wasn’t the stray cat yowling outside my bedroom but the motion-sensitive light
against my curtains that woke me up.
A lion in the wild usually makes no more than twenty kills a year.
I wonder how many lives I have trampled underfoot.
A Virginia law requires all bathtubs to be kept inside the house.
Deciduous trees blast icy mist into my face in target practice. Once I accidentally
kicked the bathtub faucet and all the blood was washed away.
Owls are the only birds that can see the color blue.
Clouds peer through the burnished plastic window of an express-mailed envelope.
The first time I saw a fallen sparrow egg I almost dared myself to touch the first feathers.
At top speeds, a pigeon can fly up to ninety miles an hour when chased by a running
child.
I used to pace the lake in hopes of getting a glimpse of Ophelia’s eyelids. People
would race each other across the water to conquer a garland of rocks.
Almonds are a member of the peach family.
Trees outshine the sun like expensive pearls against skin.
The Bible is the world’s most shoplifted book.
Fistfuls of rose- and ginger-colored leaves sprout in my pocket like islands.
Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.
My brain scatters like confetti as my muscles propel me at the rate and weight of
the words of a magistrate.
In ten minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world’s nuclear weapons
combined.
If I could live for ten minutes I would sit at this view again.
In the Arctic, the sun sometimes appears to be square.
I have taken a hundred photos of leaves and bark and rocks and birds because I
will never know this place again.
According to myth, Persephone leaves for the underworld each fall. Her mother mourns
and the earth becomes barren and cold.
I thumb a quarter into the binoculars not to watch the valley but to look for
the sharpened city buildings of my home.
The giants are kneeling. They see the sky.

Anne spent the night in the wild cherry tree. She decided as dusk was falling that the Cuthberts of Green Gables must have been delayed and believed firmly that they would arrive for her in time for breakfast the following morning. Hoisting the carpet bag—just so—over her head, she hooked the fragile handle over a broken branch, then clambered up among the ash-grey limbs of the tree.

It was like a cloud of snow, although decidedly more perfumed—she found herself sneezing once or twice as night fell. On one occasion, the sound startled a boy who had been walking under the tree, hurrying along his way home. The boy had stopped and turned with such alarm on his face that Anne had been forced to cover her mouth and stifle her laughter as he ran in fear from the spot, perhaps imagining some ghost or ghoul was watching him from the dark branches.

The carpet bag made a serviceable pillow, as she had discovered on the train, but situating herself comfortably in the sloping boughs of the cherry tree was another matter. She had just begun to fall asleep, despite the discomfort—it had, after all, been a very long day full of excitement and longing— when she lost her balance and spent a dizzying moment clutching a thin branch, looking out at the darkness below. Fear sank into her stomach in that moment as her imagination filled the void below with hungry things, just waiting for a little girl like herself to fall into their open jaws. Although she felt she must cry, she worried her tears might only attract the beasts in greater numbers. In that moment, Anne allowed a worry she had been suppressing since she had arrived to make its voice heard; what if the Cuthberts did not come for her at all?

But as she regained her balance and these thoughts began to overwhelm her, the clouds suddenly shifted and a shaft of moonlight fell through the dome of white petals. Her fears were dispelled and her bed was just as she had thought it would be; peaceful, radiant—like sleeping in a fairy’s palace. Anne closed her eyes, breathing in the honey-scented air of the cherry blossoms and bracing herself against the trunk to make avoid another tumble, she fell asleep and dreamed of Green Gables.

each morning,
before we uncover my peepholes and
shrink from the yawning void
waiting beneath the impossible streets

before we push oak legs through
phantom dust tracks to their canonized
configurations and reset our
twin-acted stage of brain matter gray

before we hear, warbling through the
plaster, a million miniature devils
singing my hapless name into
rebirth as a unworldly beast

i pray that i might roll my
decaying marbles toward the
holiday china and spy a speck of
sugar i did not request

so that before i might scrub a
papery spider from the flatware, i
may seize back and finally
go to sleep.

Aeolus releases a rock-blocked opening in his pre-Christian eight-sided condo. A warm breeze shoots through the conversion layer and hits high dry air. A pair of ups and downs mate in thirty minutes of passion and you arrive in a blond Kansas cornfield with a moist blue sky.

At night the Whirlpool Nebula, canes venatici swirls like Ajax in a shiny black Jacuzzi. Thunderheads surge toward the storm cellar where you assume the fetal position and clutch the still point at the crown of your head. Hailstones big as Augean dung-balls drive fear home.

Yet—and yet—there she is, The Girl With The Cloak totally relaxed in the Cyclopean eye of the storm.  She joins the supercell of bickering couples venting their overdrafts while the Mother Cloud spiraling above at 50 mph produces four warring elephant trunks trumpeting sonic fanfare. Each ropy vacuum moves in a separate direction, emerging and returning to the Mother with a cargo of human bodies, cows, trash cans, and mobile homes mobilized for the first time.

Meanwhile, the Wicked Witch of the West, who added another T to Wichita, bends over a muddy river and beats a confiscated tatter of the cloak on a rock:

I knock this rug upon the stone
‍ ‍ to raise the wind in evil's name.
It shall not die 'til I please again.

Annoyed by the slant rhyme, The Girl With The Cloak turns her into a Rotarian and sets her spinning off to Texas where tournedos are so common they eat them with A-1 sauce.