Imagery Exercise

Menagerie


1.

In the kitchen, the school of plates
Is at last gathered in the shoals of the cabinets
The oven breathes hot on her neck,
she feeds it a songless bird

The teapot shrieks, a peacock,
And her hands lift the angry thing,
Headless and spouting into the cup
An open mouth that hunger cannot feed

The television flings shit all over
The vacuumed carpets and clean scrubbed walls
Till she throttles it with a switch
And stands in the silence,

Barefoot on the carpet’s hairy back.


2.
the babies’ metal keys have stopped spinning
does she know?
how my eyes lick her neck, how
I breathe her milk-dreams like a cat,
her hair a nest of nightmares

in the dark, the bed sighs and moans
the pillows slip from their cases
like the heads of abducted whores
and while she sleeps
the moon and I stare at each other