1.
forgetting last week like you forgot the past
two decades of life like two wet socks 
from yesterday's downpour washing clean
the streets splashing traffic on your skin

2.
from high above the flooding puddles
second looks plop down
a landscape of eyes
wide and shot blank
in the face of strangers
reflecting us

3.
we are something of the glass variety
kept behind the local display of the familiar
novelties sold on corners
half-priced with bad weather

4.
we sleep on our shoulders
at odd angles and hours
all heads and necks creased
and tucked in secret at night

5.
at night we slipped to escape the glass
the glass fell through to the floor
floored between a thousand gaping hands
hands all with their eyes closed 
closed for the evening of nightmares
nightmares and dreams

6.
the elevator carries up broken mirrors
and disabled hands come down
detached at the waist
then rejoined in bed

7.
a neonlit child calls.
her lost shadows form an assembly line
out under the dim red cross,
the echoes of her mother,
a mother,
no mother.

(she will learn how to share
all things good in time)

8.
in departure there is return

9.
to the caged monkey
i will sing

10.
full belly, full moon,
go sliver by sliver,
she left us
all alone
in a land of strangers
stranger than we,
no belly, no moon
to walk by tonight,
no belly, no moon
warm dark to cold light.
the walls are bare
the mosquitoes full

the buildings dirty
so easily

the children play
the children fall

careless steps
on the stairwell slide

motorbikes riding
on ghosts of dust

mimic the missing
clouds on ground
today's dream rose
in a pot of oil

bubbles marched in line formation
held limping crickets

and dried moth corpses
poured out the throat

of a mute little girl
spilled on the floor

and down through the holes
of the mice who scrambled

before breakfast was made.