Hast thou 2 loaves of bread
Sell one + with the dole
Buy straightaway some hyacinths

play a little music on the rooftop
get a body good and wet

After the old man fell
and broke his hip working in the garden
the shrubs next door grew free,

I was the poolboy but it was billiards
I got up on the table with a feather duster
and did a little dance like the honeybee

Each evening now the ash blue flame
swept from my fingertips
climbing its gas ladder up the flue

It was fever that made the world
burn last summer, that afternoon
when I lay watching the sun pour

Roxy lifts her furrowed face and opens
her mouth for another hunk of banana muffin.
Her eyes are matted shut; her white hair wild as Isaiah’s.

Everyone else slept and we
were skinny-dipping in my mother’s pool
when the moon rose and birds

impossible to pick it up. the oily outer coating catches on the kitchen
counter and begs to grow, even where there’s no soil, the ones I did
manage to plant lived for three years—never trees, but the flat leaves

Purple puts on the squeeze.
Purple is tart and narrow.
Tyrant purple goes straight for the heart,