Farm Five

it's christmas time at farm five.
ho ho ho.
it's state-controlled.

in the window,
a candle.
an egg.
behind the pane,
a touch of plague.

come to farm five, just down the lane.
the ostler is mad, the butler insane.

it's christmas time at farm five.
religion is dead.
obedience alive.

on the door,
a wreath.
a cross.
behind it, more
untimely loss.

come to farm five, for mandatory yule.
with last year's host's head
skewered on the newel.

_____

Shoot The Ballerina

When the revolution came,
Katya was in mid-air.
Her partner was so taken with the sight of the soldiers in their uniforms,
That he forgot himself
Like Jesus' luggage,
And forgot Katya as well.

She came down from the spinning embrace of God,
Not into her partner's strong hands,
But behind the blankness of his back
As he smiled at a cavalryman.
She fell like a sputnik
To the hard stage
And the monkey within
Howled Tchaikovsky flawlessly.

This is where they shoot me,
She thought, amazed.
My leg is broken
Just like the performance,
Just like the dynasty,
Or the regime.
This is where they shoot me
Quick and clean behind one pitch-perfect ear.

But the cavalryman lay dead
At the hands of the second violinist,
Who,
In fierce regret,
Shook him like a puppet to revive him
That he might rejoin the violence and stupidity of the moment.

Like an equine saint, came the cavalryman's horse.
She grabbed a stirrup,
And he plunged magnificently over each row of seats
As if they were river stones or fence rails.
Again,
Katya was launched Heavenward;
Her lips at his velvet ear whispered,
Tonight, we both escape the glue factory!

This time, when she came down,
It was on his back
On the cobbled street outside,
And they went like hell,
Like anything,
Like that,
Til the moon disappeared, a fresh-healed bone.
_______

for dverse OLN #6

Dolphins

The dolphins came out of the sea,

And from the corners of the eyes of giants who lay weeping and unconscious across the lazy heavens.



It rained dolphins, their bodies as smooth as dogwood blooms.

They smiled as they fell, they were fog, they were everywhere.



In those times, you could put the sun where you pleased--

It could rise in the south,

At midnight.

Who cared?



I live in a paper house which is always on fire,

I keep dying until it bores me;

I lie down on the smoke like a cat in a streetside window,

And the disused milk chute with the rusty catch holds the stupidities I cherish most.



Now they say,

Dolphins are really birds--

The sun is nailed up like a tin sign on an empty barn,

And no one is coming to save you,

To kiss you,

Or even to bury you.



The dogwoods are dead and the sea floor has fallen in,

Revealing God in the magma,

Chinamen in the paddies,

And you,

Falling,

Like a feather into the flames.

_____

Horses

I inherited my bedroom from my brothers, boys of another time, so tall and high

That stern gods peered down from their crew-cut hair.



On the wall,

George Washington kept crossing the Delaware with his men,

Like the Last Supper aboard a little military boat.

If I threw a coin,

It would turn to a star,

Then a bird;

It would drop enough feathers to make a fine hat--

I would board a locomotive train to St. Louis,

And visit 1904,

The first girl to do so

From here.



When I closed my eyes,

I saw the canopy bed I'd seen in the Hudson's catalog,

And armies of stuffed animals in rows;

They would say they had never heard of George Washington,

Or the British,

Or boys,

Or the ghost in the basement

That only I seemed to know was there.



My room was never mine--

Cleaned within an inch of its life every couple days at my mother's unhappy hands,

And by (her forbidding, joyless) god, it had better stay that way.

I would take out my puppets my grandmother had made for me

--Barn Boy and Pretty Horse Puppet--

And they would say,

It is a fine day

Full of apples and hay.



Oh, mother, when you stood in my doorway like bad news on the way,

Looking at small me on my Indian blanket bed with horses on my hands,

Was it because you heard the hoof beats

Of us running away across the plains

To an invitation-only joy

That only I could see?

_______

Thank you to Rene for reminding me

The Puppet Theater

Gingerbread-Man Puppet and Pretty-Horse Puppet get married in the puppet theater.

Pretty-Horse Puppet has a mane like you wouldn't believe--

Don't think she doesn't know it, too,

Always tossing her head like that.

Fluffy-Tail Fox Puppet joins the puppet show.

Fluffy-Tail Fox Puppet and Pretty-Horse Puppet sleep together one afternoon.

In the evening, Gingerbread-Man Puppet spreads his soft, fingerless hands and wants to know,

"How could you sleep with Fluffy-Tail Fox Puppet? She's a girl!"

"She's a fox," points out Pretty-Horse Puppet.

They look at each other across the puppet theater, bouncing slightly as puppets will.

"I'm sorry, Gingerbread-Man Puppet, but our marriage is crumbling," says Pretty-Horse Puppet with a toss of her head.

"Bite me!" says Gingerbread-Man Puppet, which is a mistake.

In the next act, Pretty-Horse Puppet and Fluffy-Tail Fox Puppet are married and living in the puppet theater.

God doesn't mind.

They're puppets.

__________

When I was a child, I had a pair of puppets that my maternal grandmother had made. They were horses, Pretty-Horse Puppet and Barn-Boy Puppet. I also had a little puppet theater. I think that all of them were hand-me-downs...I know the theater was. Anyway, I was extremely partial to Pretty-Horse Puppet. I liked getting to be the girl. This is a surprise?