I lost the magician in a bowl of
potato cheese soup.

He would capture my attention
by sculpting tiny faces in my
terrycloth bath towel,
or the knotted pile of the carpet.

I liked the machine.

It made my ears bigger.
Sometimes the size of oceans.

I could hear a child’s heartbeat
in a stick of cotton candy.

It turned my skin into margarine.
I was spread on the sandwiches of dead people.
(Before they died, of course.)

I listened to their conversations over lunch.
When they swallowed me,
I could hear their thoughts.

Matisse.
Magritte.
My grandmother.

She had a tiny steel temple in her chest
where fireflies went to pray.
My father had one too.
So do I.

My hand was once half an exploding star,
my lover’s back the other.

After all that time,
drifting in space
they were reunited.

Briefly.

Sometimes it was too much.
Words on bumper stickers became
wild dogs. They would leap from the vinyl
to the hood of my car.

Radio molested my ears.
Smell was the night sky on July 4th.

But I could fly.
Like a pipe bomb.
I was holy.
Like a voodoo doll.

I’m going to stare at my carpet now.