If I'd Known it was Going to be That Kind of Party

Switchblades sprout and little else.
Flowers! Engagement rings like clouds
strutting as only prophecies can.
Gravity is a halo. The little dead bird
has moved less than the fan blades
which turn in winter only by colonies of dust.
We do not belong only to colonies of dust.
There was once a man who was not a man
but a weary horse with a chainsaw for a head.
Everything he touched looked like wine,
the red reception, the touching satellites.
Mourning, like family, is a sentence
that reaches like a tree branch
into a white house. O kindly monster,
O flying flying. A boring tornado is not a tornado
but a Sunday evening. I am on this boat
and I am not on this boat. It's like taking
an allergy pill while doing perfect backflips
on the trampoline. Once in a letter the choice
was between trampoline and cello or I don't remember.
I choose the flood, the buoyancy coupling
shamelessly with danger, although if someone
is saddening the air with a cello nearby
I am disinclined to ease them.
I'm getting married and then I'll be married.
A shadow fell for seven days
and then we danced on stained concrete
while waiting for the water in the other room
to boil. You know the tricycle? Yeah,
that one. It will take you over the mountain.
Tell us what colors you find there,
what light they feed on, how we may join you.

Copyright © 2005 Marc McKee All rights reserved
from Backwards City Review

Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission