“Escaping the sanatorium’s easy: just chat up that keen nurse about the foxtrot, ease her into unlocking a door with a smile and then it’s a matter of lazy guards and an empty hallway. You’ll be out on a bash before nightfall.”
(photo credit: wikipedia commons)
Underground, subway windows transform into mirrors. I marry the reflections of strangers beside me—Nose-ring Girl stomps off at Grand, Bearded Guy deserts me at Division for his wife. But I collect the moments between, carry them home to occupy empty corners.
I fell through a cloud last night,
piffed then sluiced
through cumulocirrus fields—
puffs of smoke
strung gray and then white again
I looked to the night beyond,
orb-eyed, past
the cuneiform I’d cut,
(whistling air)
saw Castor and Pollux guard
wet nebulas strewn like poor
Zeus’s babes
that wandered Olympus bare
Stars shift shape:
my Gemini folded back
to cloth, to my bedclothes’ jet
fabric sheen
Polaris, the cad, stretched out
(closet, clock)
and up to make walls, then spun
a vortex to fan me dry
Bed again—
tucked tight as a diving suit
(humming) and
I fell through a cloud last night
Northwest Journals 