Moon-Garden Lesson

Fifty people interested in night
moths and their flower preferences
trail a small woman in the dark.

What is the difference
between a frenulum and a jugum?

I don't know. All the blossoms here are
white. Milk in a darkened refrigerator or
my own fingers in a nightmare, it makes

no difference. I won't be able to tell
these people apart in the morning.

Off to the left are a man and a woman
who is probably giving him head—

it's hard to hear. In the back of the crowd
an old woman pushes her ears forward.

The Bird-Feeder

When I was three I still had the power
To fly in circles over the air conditioner
Or persuade a felt-faced wolf to eat

Lunch from an empty plate.
My imagination had yet to disprove itself:
If I dreamt a bird at the feeder, there was a bird,

Full-fledged and indisputable as my right
To sit in the front of the bathtub.
Then you were born. At first you had little to say.

I fed the birds, you watched. These were our jobs.
My animal prescience waned as you learned to speak,
To fight when I assigned you the uglier doll

Or the lowest branches on the magnolia tree.
Sometimes I miss conversation with the birds,
The blushing octopus I imagined I'd marry.

The dreams I have now are of eating
Your sunglasses, which taste exactly like licorice,
A candy I hate, a makeshift ration of sugar.

Why the Man in the Moon Can't be Seen Tonight

There are clumsy birds that play chicken
with their own reflections, flying at glass
doors and bay windows as if the house
between them were invisible. Often

these birds die. Sometimes they fall
in love on impact, reeling away starred:
What a beak! they think, and fly back, puzzled
that the bird who acts just like them is hard.

One such crow saw himself in the moon
and caught it with the tip of his wing,
emptying it out like a bucket of pale dishwater.