1.

There are peacock feathers in the kitchen

and the mirror’s broken in the bathroom.

 

A cold hand brushes my shoulder

as I walk by the open door.

 

An open umbrella hangs

from a ladder in the garage.

 

One of the dining room chairs

pulls away from the table by itself.

 

I open the drapes to let the sunlight in

and everything is okay.

 

2.

It may be three in the morning

but your earphones still thread their way

around your arm and throat,

blood vessels journeying towards

an iPod heart

playing something you never listen to.

A dog barks down the street,

a tolling bell in the London fog

that has moved out of London.

And softly,

ever so softly,

your heart taps

against the ironwork of your ribs.

 

It is quiet.

 

3.

Inside your temple body,

a monk walks over dusty marble

and bows before the idol in the cage.

You don’t know

if there’s anybody left

besides him

and the dragon,

curled up around the idol’s neck

and roaring.

Perhaps they just don’t have a way out.

 

4.

A faucet is dripping

somewhere in the house,

a quivering plink on metal,

a violin string on a brightly lit stage

shivering and throwing rosin into the air,

a young girl standing in the snow

at a bus station,

waiting for the one twenty-six to New York.

 

5.

A name.

 

A word

that holds a person in its swoops and dashes,

cradles a head on its knees,

and whispers instructions

sweet as honey

into the listening ear.

 

It dresses up as a gentleman

or a pauper

and gives you a matching mask.

 

When it dances,

you must dance as well,

and when it is somber

you have no options.

 

It claims a romance,

an obsessive possession,

and it calls the noose it loops around your neck

jewelry.

 

And only in the dark of night,

when the name slumbers on the ceiling above you

can you see your own face.

 

6.

I have ten pairs of shoes,

of which I wear four.

 

I have seventeen black pens,

of which I use three.

 

I have nine lives,

of which I have wasted all.

 

7.

The plane is dropping from the sky.

 

Everything shakes,

rattling like frozen bones

that are about to the hit the ground

and shatter.

The safety demonstration

never warned you about this.

In a moment of calm

you think that the lights on the floor

are redundant.

The walls tear outwards

like origami lotuses.

Maybe this is what the shooting stars

you once wished upon as a child

really were.

 

And as the wind howls in

to suck your screams

out of your mouth

you fall into your bed.