The Rival

My mother got a flying baby. She already had four cats and two dogs. When I came in on Saturday, the baby was tied to a banister, flying up around the ceiling. Mom, you need to keep that ceiling fan off, I said. The baby smelled funny, its diaper was sagging and its skin looked loose. It had orange and yellow hair all over its hands. A baby is a lot of responsibility, Mom, I said. I snapped my fingers at the baby, trying to get it to fly down to me. The baby didn't even look, just kept fluttering its sticky wings and bumping into the walls. It doesn't look right, I said to Mom. I feed it every day, she said, and spray it with water, they said that babies need a lot of water. I asked my mom, Where's its bottle? She said, Somewhere, somewhere. She dug into the pile of soaking dirty dishes in the sink. She was wearing her t-shirt with the embroidered reindeer on motorcycles. Why are you wearing that? I said, it's not even Halloween yet. She fed one of her toy poodles something from the sink. Have you thought of a name yet? she said, I asked you for a name. I heard the baby bump into something in the hall, its wings whirring like a blender. The baby started to make a sound -- something between a toy fire engine and a bark. I think the baby's crying, I said. Oh, he will stop on his own, my mother said, he always does.

Idaho, 1972

A fly the size of a diamond
ring lays eggs in the bay
mare's wounds, deep red

holes near her withers.
The horse flicks (right, left,
left) her velvet pocketbook

ears, nibbles the yellow
stubble smearing the roots
of the dogwood; the dogwood's

scars are closing
over our names. If you
put your hands together,

you can help me
up onto her back.
Thumbs in her rubies,

we fly around the yard,
wind ripping dirty fingers
through our pony tails.

------

Hello, world.

The Wedding Night


My husband walks in, his hand
on the back of a fox, kicking

the door shut behind him with his heel,
and he says.  Staring at my neck

with the eyes of Mary after she found
the lamb.  As he fingers his long braid,
smelling of jasmine and bone dust.  

My husband says.  

My husband with the crooked crown,
with the half-seeing eye.  
With the thumb that wanders while he sleeps.  

My husband limps to the fireplace,
trailed by the bespectacled dog and bear;

my husband lifts the lid. To the murmuring,
bubbling, black-bellied pot.  The pot says,

get your filthy feet off my new red carpet,
before my husband.

Tips the bitter soup into the fire.  As the fire dies,
cursing and spitting.

He says, Don't.  My husband says, Don't let
your fairytales get in the way of my mouth.