Sonnet

what prize did you hope to hold in those smooth
hands for the plan sketched in cloud and unbuilt—
what melody might have flown forth if you
freed yourself from petty politics of
the boardroom and tested those scrawny wings—
but you sat with a job safe as socks and
a single number near the cold solstice

now in the damp the aches where you bend while
those black glacier teeth topple in tepid
tea you mumble to the cat it wasn’t
all bad these bloody feet could still march this
hand salute the lurking shadow who smiles
at the coughing cubicle dwellers soon
to be churned into cheap fertilizer

Reading Tender Buttons always just about to make sense a half-learned a real language you can still laugh like kindergarten maybe or waking from a dream having to pee you guess what Susie Asado looked like from the tea maybe maybe maybe tea maybe not maybe it’s all too sexy a stupid man like me will never understand and I am as mutton I know she’s from a different book but so what if it rhymes like butter falling off bread to glow too glow wait where are you going are we going don’t tell me don’t tell anyone the secret keeps the bread fresh the glass hurt

a fish through the hands will write a list of future accomplishments gulp the last tepid tea and remember I’m somehow the narrator though my training is in watch repair once a thriving industry in days when many people were killed by and these days you don’t know who to believe when you take your pants off but that’s the way it’s always been at least when you climb that tree to look at the moon you can just remember the sound of the first sparrow through her curls