WALKING ON THIN ICE

Sun Ra

Sun Ra

1

My brother, a man of few words
goes across the street to pick up
a Mexican lunch and after he’s full
he gives me his bag of
leftover fresh tortilla chips
a kind of intimacy

2

Tetras – their movement’s squared off into binary digits
flicking 90 degrees like an object suddenly stimulated in a child’s mobile
half of them draw straight lines one tetra length long
various vectors and tangled orthogonalities

They cloud in their favorite spot, the hollow on the right side of the tank
between the lake rocks and the bookcase
The ones on the edge more quick, shooting long tangents,
unsure what they define
and when they thin they scatter
the cloud loses its mind

When a tetra’s alone, it’s adrift
without the ballast and balance
of its companions

The reflection
from the fishtank’s bubbler
goes up at the same rate
looping like contained
stars on a strip
of quicksilver

3

Lyle Lovette says
stars shine on water
sun burns on sand

4

Jupiter is rising
in the ring of Saturn
to celebrate the equivalence
of the days forthcoming

Polly want a polysaccharide?

5

Staircase at night
Low piano note
Comfortable noir

6

I’m going to get a beer
husband goes off to urinate
we’re a pair

The romance of
cyborg man and
atomic eye woman–
the title of our
next book

“When the rising sun
hits the army tents it’s a tent, son,”
he says, then, “s’n will be gone
before eight”

I say, “Astute observations for hire”
He says, “Call me Am….. Astute Man”

then “I was born on the border of
Tolerance and Intolerance,
Texas.”

7

Were my face an owl
thought not thought but
regard for thock of my
feeling, a mirror bent
down from a tree
undersea
being

8

I’d be a
calm caravan
plodding crucible of mothered feet,
shadow liquid in its shifting
under witnessing stars

Retiform filter
gold sifting loaded loam
easy, like a cold ripening apple
thinking about the sun
in the night

~ Lady