bildungsroman

AUDRI SOUSA

in the twenty minutes it takes

for the smoke ring

the moon has blown to arrive

i become a pier vagrant

and lose all interest in hula hooping

and the idea of lungs as pink

cartoon pretty

shopping bags in the chest

i dream your postcards

into my pocket

i dream breath

into everyone we have known

a severed starfish

bleeding in my palm

the venn diagrams

in which we elect to move

i remember when the earth

was an open bowl

and we stood on its rim

careful not to follow

the bats and sparrows

that fell screaming

into the atlased cauldron

when the fear was still metallic

on our tongues

there was cemetery grass

in my mary janes

the night i fed the television

to the nimbus clouds

cut of cardboard

full of emergency

like atari gods

in frenetic colander light

i crave nightshades

spun from tree fingers in a dangled

sequence of silk

i watch an aircraft tangled

in latitude lines

and wait for the fanged pollinators