Sausage jackhandle careens between abandoned Radio Flyer, overturned, missing

wheel, leg, fin, wing, whatever belongs on its corner

 

may as well give up on two doves pacing in mulch, toasting bread

you will never reconnoiter Great Wall Collage.

 

Whisper the dog around (should that be asquare?) the block

tears dripping off your shoulders like ripe mulberries

 

all is cheese, flush with arrogance and herbal tea,

you labialize mourning sounds, spattered with palmate shadows

 

dogtooth violet crazes concrete

screams purple windcurses at hubcaps

 

you know the way home is fire: flames painted on fenders

screw-top candles burning fluid, blazing Cuyahoga barges,  brushfires eating L.A.

 

remember  bagpipes in Blue Ridge woods

grandmothers dancing in a cafeteria

 

woman walking, inverted bucket hiding her head

old acrobat swinging from a county fair flagpole

 

unscheduled ragabond at the composers’ conservatory

twinkle, twinkle on paper and comb

 

essential as a toilet full of polyethylene flowers

adorning a shopfront, lyrical

 

as a committee of flamingoes

hayloft’s iron pulley singing rust hymns to its rope

 

your heart was fractured, falling

down granite daystairs, slamming yesterday like a wall.

 

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Patsy Anne Bickerstaff, B.A., J.D., Richmond, VA, is a retired Administrative Law Judge, current president of the Poetry Society of Virginia.  Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications, including her two published books of poetry, City Rain (Librado Press, 1989) and Mrs. Noah’s Journal, (San Francisco Bay Press, 2007.)