My Suite, My Lovely
Midnight,
and the pachyderms
just above our apartment
are drunk and trying to dance.
They step like cannonfire
warning us from dreams.
You can almost make out
Tchaikovsky, can just see
them hunch and wobble,
plié and arabesque.
They tumble, giggle
and grope on thin parquet,
struggle around trunk
and tusk to find
tongues. I roll over.
You mutter
something about
peeing and get up.
No peace, and so I remember
the monsters of my youth,
what wonderful silence!
Able to keep still under stairwells,
behind rows of button-up
shirts on hangers. In my attic
most of all, where a forest
of cardboard rose to roofing nails—
I would slip handguns
from the old medicine bag
my grandfather kept them in,
aware of what eyes sunk into me.
I would take each one out,
try to figure where the bullet
slid in, how it attracted
the hammer to a single point
in its back. I’d hold each handle
tight, feeling something
like the tickle of fur
or claws against my neck,
picture turning to shoot,
a bullet entering air.
You come back.
Lay down in moonlight
your naked back. Our neighbors
on our ceiling, a trampoline.
Come, you say. Let’s give up on sleep.
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