Comma, apostrophe, back-
slash, cursive flourish —
an all-purpose divider
that only accidentally resembles
a question mark in search
of its dot-like perch.
No self-respecting crow, beak
clever at leverage, ever
departed from
the declarative mode.
Male & female
hand & handle,
heavy as Wednesday.
What iron tree might ramify
if you insinuated yourself
into some sidewalk crack?
Scissors with an overbite,
blades like quotation marks
devouring the text —
some lost codex from
the Aluminum Age —
& leaving in its place
a jagged rent: massively
buck-toothed myself,
I know how elusive
a clean break can be.
Despite what orthodontists
would have us think,
a naturally straight bite
is a rare thing.
Most of us learn early
how to compensate,
A reckless poem crushed between ads —
there’s nothing to see here, folks.
Keep moving.
What begins with this
singular L?
New worms, certainly,
from the splitting
of their parent self.
Whole new cities
of aerobic bacteria.
Stones from rocks.
Sprouts of pigweed, lamb’s-quarters,
purslane, dock: seeds
that had lain dormant for decades
until the hoe stirred them
into life.
This italic L spells
hills for yams,
channels for irrigation water,
Who would have thought that two vacant globes
preserved in alcohol
could so hold a construction
worker’s attention,
a devotional gaze otherwise reserved
for gravity-defying breasts or buttocks
if not always the eyes that go with them,
that cool disregard
that elicits a squint & a whistle
at whatever fails to fall into line.
This time, there are no magic beans.
Every man-jack turns into
an acme-threaded beanstalk.
The hound under the porch
noses at the growing
hoard of sunlight
as the old house
climbs groaning
into the sky.
If the part that screws
is the head — this X-
shaped tip — then
the other end must be
tail: the shaft rooted
in transparent sun-
colored plastic like
an insect in amber.
And considering how
the power drill
with screwdriver bit
has replaced it,
this might as well be
a relic from
the Mesozoic.
The tip attracts
Metal claws of the beast
we would much rather
be descended from —
no wimpy swinging in trees,
no equivocating opposable tine —
whether pitching hay or turning soil
their purpose is the same:
to bite what they cannot chew
& carry what they cannot keep.
There are forks also in roads,
in creeks & in tongues,
but for them
everything remains open.
How ironic then that the man-made fork
should epitomize inflexibility:
insurrectionary bedfellow of the torch,
As a bucket ages,
its galvanized surface
takes on the look
of new ice — that blue-
white jigsaw puzzle —
or a flock of cranes.
Something in its make-up
clearly rebels
against its type-casting
as a mere container
or temporary conveyance.
Even half-full,
for example, the handle
cuts into the hand.
People rarely think
to store a bucket
A pair of old jeans —
I amputate both legs
with a pair of scissors.
I’ve cut myself on paper,
on grass blades,
even on certain sharp words,
but never with scissors.
One on a shelf in the basement
beside the string,
another with the craft paper,
& a third nestled in the sewing cabinet
among spools of thread:
We are rich. We have three pairs of scissors.
Every schoolkid grasps
the concept of a balance of powers
thanks to fist rock, palm paper,
Digging with a shovel
always makes me hungry.
It’s too much like a spoon, I suppose,
& the soil too close
to food here: heavy, brown,
& as full of foreign objects
as any stew. The shovel
is both tongue & tooth
on a white ash body
twice as big around as a broom.
I love groundbreaking,
holding the handle out like
a dance partner, momentarily solemn
until the first absurd little hop
onto the top lip of the blade
& the fast ride down, barring
Back when all angels were male,
the hammer was the first
perfect androgyne.
Mounted on a pegboard,
it still looks almost aerodynamic,
poor thing.
This is no claw, but a pair of legs
strong enough between them
to give birth to nails.
Or rails that forgot to run parallel,
converging on a vanishing point
that’s much too close:
the train’s stuck in station
& the hammer keeps trying to hop
on its one flat foot.