She chops the Amazonian strain mushroom,

a small rubber umbrella splitting open

 

and open.  Lets the pieces fall from her hand

into a blender hemorrhaging cranberry juice. 

 

Chatter and whiz, crimson dulled to mauve. 

She drinks and waits for her mind’s funhouse

 

to open its double-doors.  On the carpet again

staring at the painting, seascape on velvet.

 

Soon the waves begin to crash against a shore

dark as obsidian, crest upon crest unfurling

 

like a fistful of shook tinsel.  The glittered

hours sail past and still on the floor,

 

spellbound by this celestial ocean.  Twilight

when she turns to the green leaf stuck

 

to the window-screen.  No, not a leaf,

but a hummingbird, its needle-beak caught

 

in the mesh.  It flutters and rests, flutters

and rests until she cages the bird in her hands,

 

its heart clicking wildly against her palm.

She could go nowhere or anywhere now.

 

She opens his fingers.  And by opening,

paints the sky with a stroke of emerald.

 

Do not be alarmed if you smell smoke.

Which is from the wildfire and not the plane.

From a single match struck by an arsonist

and dropped on the forest floor.  Look out

the windows to your right and down below.

That ruin was meant.  To dress as many trees

with fire until they have nothing to show

but blackened ribs.  When we finally land

and your legs take you outside the airport

the scent of destruction is doubled.  Cough

and wheeze if you want.  Wipe your eyes.

Behind the haze the sun will glow orange

as a jack-o’-lantern in the fog.  Click on

the television and this corner of the planet

looks apocalyptic.  The tidal wave of flames

and torched houses.  A chain-link fence

warped from the heat into a fisherman’s net.

All these acres going up reminds me

of the ruin we’ve made with our own hands. 

Ask our exes.  Query our skittish children.

If this plane was an air tanker we would skim

the ocean and drape blue veils of water

over the flames.  As many roundtrips

it takes to douse this inferno.  So once again

green could brighten the charcoaled hills.

Until someone else walks into the forest alone.

Whose heart is the red tip of a matchstick

he strikes and strikes in his own darkness.

How Alexander Graham Bell Built
His Speaking Machine

 

With help from his brother. 

With parts molded from

a human skull: the jaw,

 

the palate.  Some rubber. 

Some tubing and strips of tin. 

A tongue maneuverable

 

and wooden, a tongue

unlocked from a tree.  Done,

they made the apparatus cry

 

Mama!  Voice without

the lungs.  Speech minus

the human being.  Over

 

and over it bellowed

the same two syllables. 

So the neighbors thought

 

infant.  Thought change

his diaper, give him

some milk, shut him up. 

 

As the brothers chuckled. 

As their deaf mother

played the piano, striking

 

the wires with cotton

hammers.  A melody

heard only by touch,

 

the pulse of a thousand

heartbeats thrumming

under her fingers.