View From The Kitchen

It is like looking down the trunk
of an old, hollow tree.

Morning will not come
for this cold night.

I stand there and listen to the

clock’s

hands, submerge my head in the icy
bath of new weather;

up there, the roof waits.
She waits with her flags. She waits for her view
to change.

The cat box does not clean itself—I am full of it.
Why do I not get tired?
The leaves

shiver
on the tree’s arms, there are
olives in the

fridge, fruit flies
that come under the hand
(what can I do about them? I can’t

obliterate them all, my dear), nights to paper the wall,
relatives to wish you happy birthday,
the elation of solitude to pass in the halls,
versions of ourselves

to butcher into shapes, and let their tastes
bewitch us, make us fall in

love with them,

dominate us, jettison our wits
with little square parachutes.

No one knows when our blood stopped
pushing through these clubs
called hands.

It stopped somewhere in the mountains,
somewhere in the battle objects of the forests,
somewhere in Oregon or the
knolls of
Big Sur’s bloated nose,
thinned by the
terse, thin

air of America.

And now this big body
has been put under the ground.
Big human,
big stitched up forehead,
big chest once filled with humor.