sound constellations

little misses with ballet shoes (banana peels) dance to
the lines of idioms made upside-down and queer
by the beat of rainfall, each drop
a silver streak in the air
the factory-air streets
shiver in delight, their smiles like
music caught in chimes--
a wrinkle in genetics.

boys from another town
with smart fingers and lips that
murmur static
fly kites into upstairs windows
agape, a
crow sings
a song of hard-lighted rooms that taste like
emptiness, like copper and nickel and
empty cups that ring with the sound of conversation
which the lilacs on the side of the road listen to as lullabies
before their slumber is disturbed by gasoline and
chanting city bells;
in the distance birds sew the sky
lines where their brother-sparrows step to receive
the brittle kisses of
thunder and dew, threadbare like the
plumage of others lost in barbed wire.


gargoyles watch with
peaceful-grown eyes,
yawn as dew laces to make
puddles where
the girls with banana-peel shoes continue to dance
as lost oranges roll into the spaces
of their missed steps.

these mornings born in blue cities
of steel pockets sewn on pockets--

inside, strange faces of lettuce
sit on tables,
but no one to dine
and the girls with yellow feet, finished with their lament,
touch their fingers together, their
homes hidden between.




~