always I'll be only one more moving part

1. 

Each day the city unhinges its jaw and I climb inside. 

I sing show tunes and polish its teeth. At night, I ride 

its lit scales into glittered, showstopping dreams. 

 

2. 

Sister, the desert is more even than I dreamed. On each 

rock rests a bowl of water, a wooden flute, a lizard. 

The clouds swoop into the shape of my fears, then 

blow off into the next county. 

 

3. 

I live between mountains and take my smallness, 

like a pill, on waking. Always I'll be only one 

more moving part, blurred in snow and stone. 

I'll never fall for the slick con of consequence. 

 

4, 

Bright, or secret, or ghosted, towns fall into place 

like the corner pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. All the sky 

pieces look the same. I can't fit the fragments 

of clouds together. 

 

5. 

This place is as I never left it: the neon sub shop 

on the corner, the junior high. My house is an aquarium 

filled with tulips. My mouth is a tulip filled with dust. 

 

[Catherine Pierce, 'Postcards from Her Alternate Lives', from The Best American Poetry 2011]