in a morning colored like a conch shell's
insides, wrung from a neanderthal

night’s rain, he raises his arms to remix
sunspots, to birth aurora babies

for the next day and the next –
his seat's a cliff over tides ever changing

her tuffet rests on red windspoils
her arms, hers, are crooked like the limbs

of apple trees around solid space,
the stench of mainstreet and manure

she focuses on chipped silver toe polish,
eye level microscopes to a fat abdomen

once lifted by impossibly diaphanous
green wings – maoism and icarus are

ground beneath the blood from a dog’s
eye and children’s calls for kool-aid

at the coffee house with the lizard
on the sign, he and she talk – his conversation

ties each bird into the morning, dresses
the crow in a black suit of mourning

and gossip       the doves are left to coo
at his largeness yet her life lies

so small, so small, so small in flattening
fields beneath the weather


© 2004 by PJ Nights