PARTIAL SET

Call them Thing, the Human Torch,

Mr. Fantastic. Invisible Girl crumbled

suddenly, tragically, in a restaurant.

Sing them like a four-beat countdown

to the real music, the last count silent,

just a gesture to the players.

Three elderly baby teeth hunker

in my mouth, knickknack haiku

that displace weightier strophes.

They are blue, soft, nearly rootless,

not juveniles at all but shriveled

hags. I love these stumpy stand-ins.

I’m glad that even my flaws

are unfinished. A quadruped

with a phantom limb. Three seasons,

no winter. Three directions, no

true north, the compass

gave its hand away when it sensed

my magnetism. Three suits but the heart

is shattered, poor dear, and every

square is open-air from here on in.

TWO IN THE BUSH

I’ve got a few good heads on my shoulders

winking out sums in Morse code: the song

equals the author plus the speaker if

the epigraph is less than one voice and

arithmetic is a group effort or

no one changes her mind in the middle.

Of course, I always change our minds

in the middle, it’s an esthetic philosophy. 

Yes, it helps to have a menstrual

cycle, Jekyll and Hyde, Jekyll and Hyde,

and to spend nine months as a legally ambiguous

number, but anyone can learn to ride in tandem.

Some old pates shrivel, or new ones push

them off, like shark teeth in a busy mouth.

This verse, how light, a bird in the hand:

a silly fistful until you want to count it.