XIII.

Engrid lays her lights across the lawn,
then wraps them around wires to say
Merry X-mas Troops. Traffic whizzes
as she recalls Truman’s adage: A wife

is the nation’s spirit. Inside the house,
Fuji snakes on his spine for an absent
hand’s affection. A television shows I,
Claudius in poor reception: above a sink,

Lady MacBeth bathes two doves.
Engrid bends parapet-low to follow
a cord toward the house’s foundation.

A green-gold stitched sweater sneaks
below boxwoods. A smokeless signal
rises, as one woman’s plea to the past.

XIV.

How will the desert look under a new
neon moon? After Bush hits his blue
Kennebunkport ball through Hagia
Sophia Hole #8? After Eve sits in an

Applebees, smokes cigarettes, drives
a napkin across the table then leaves?
Samson has no need for Olive Garden;
The Israelites need no Golden Corral.

Since March brown palms of enraged
supplication spit and fan the laurelled
king who rides a nodding donkey into

Babylon, his pockets brimming with
golden calves and halogens perfected on his
own domesticated flock. Good luck.


XV.

For children of empire, the famed corner
never comes. Our revered fury goes to
the grave unprovoked, cellulite dreams
itself into a vigilant image.

Hands do not poke through the yard.
Objects bought to quench mismanaged desires
won’t be recalled. Nothing will smell of sweat,
having been sprayed with effortlessness.

Let even our buildings fall, and debt will
defiantly grow in Victory Gardens, evil
will quickly transfer its balance.

Resilience is to resilence the world’s
murmuring. We return, deaf oppressors,
unaware of the click of our own full tank.

XVI.

I toss my room’s contents at the dot matrix
teeth beaming outside my window, pearls
from a waterless ocean, sun on a weatherless
day, a smile which sends our train through

the grass. Within it’s gaps, cloth crowns,
replicated relics, exit signs, virtual tight
ropes: dreams which do not belong to the
dreamer, flat accidents waiting to happen.

Drivers swerve to better see the kibitzer
over traffic, that rented ideal of pleasure,
giddy as a soccer game with no goals.

The kids who mimic it implode on the
playground. Within every glance, pilotspat and kiss another enameled name.