I.
Preserved in the torn pages
Of a notebook (double leaved)
The houses start up.
Everything is emptied out.
Prickly pear, race around it
Ravaged—blunt
Dashes of red
Men and women mingle:
A cactus bud
A bomb, a house, a haven
Horsemen, an unbegotten
Species, a desolation.
II.
On the facing page
A giant bird, an ostrich
Thighs pink, head tiny, staring.
A gunship clay colored, fires:
(Holes in paper
A pencil poked through).
Blue wings boil in sand
Where stick houses stand
And souls flat, brighter than air
Where a child, seated on a stone
Reaches out her hand to draw.
originally published in the Spring/Summer 2009 issue of Fence
