Step by Step Basic Carpentry
I.
Don’t know
what you want from me.
Broken table leg, split
bracing beam – I can fix.
This? I’ll tell you a riddle.
What do you call a table
that’s not a table?
Detritus Map of shipwreck.
Life after death. Lip
of an earthworm.
Not table. Not world. Not
whimper of my kitten heart.
I’ll tell you a riddle.
What do you call a handyman
underwater?
II.
If the hammer is
a crossbow is
a whisper is
a scythe
If a hammer is
an oxtail is
accordion is a
ribbon
If a hammer
is a whistle on a steel roof
If a hammer
What, then, is hurricane?
Mermaid
Follow the highway east
to find the city the water
left. Waterlines
stamped gray on underpasses.
Fluorescent crosses
mark front doors, the lawns
silvered and stiff. School parking lot
full of sedans silted
to the door handle. Blue tarps
and stoplights dark.
*
What you find
is this: library in the hallway,
air stuffed blue-black like
exhaust, dust
jackets torn from
bookshelves. Face
down. Photocopied
Rita Dove swimming to
the surface. Thump
thump under-
water. After so long
under, which way is
surface?
*
In the inverted classroom I read
the books you left, scrape
twig and stone from crackling pages.
Second story’s an aquarium now,
desks stroking under their own
steam. Down here we’re dry as
kindling. Bodies rim
the walls above us. I wait
for ceiling tiles to fold and
buckle. They’re growing
gills like fish.