ISSUE: Spring 2012
Out from attic windows of the eyes again
I can see someone’s blowing bubbles
on the lawn.
Young couple selling the neighbor house cheap,
a boy claiming what he can, launching
his globed
cells of soap and light for home. A mother
calls to the child, father tape measures
the foundation. Magnolia’s still wintering
above the fence rot with viburnum
buds far yet in the branch,
and the kid’s not
following. He’s staring and staring or just
tired already from the long drive
ahead, gaze caught on the morning
glory’s twisted vines, the ones that clutch
a puce mold railing these owners
will not come back for. Fast sale. Mortgage
forfeit, manager fired. And a boy gone
glassy as if to stare the bargain down,
barreling his black-brown irises
at what’s real, this drift
and lacuna slip between
toy and world, house and highway, thumbprint
on a sky slicked picture window, wide
galactic swirl. Go, say the eyes.
Snag, little soap curve
disbegot of glass. Together we watch
the bubble lift, the transparent
rising eye, his pupil-fused crystal ball,
climbing the light breeze up and over
the yard’s border nation
of hemlock and hair trigger needles. What are we
supposed to do next
in the game called
displacement, nearing
the forest, market forces,
bubble made from two
kinds of luck about to break
west, curved
and wet, about to be wasted? In rain
we trust,
unradiated. Groundcover. Clover
sprawl. Underside,
veins of a leaf
lined as a mouth,
green and curved,
for the air it has to eat.
