Rodeo in Reverse. Lindsey Alexander

port, and which is solar flare?

      I could use that hand to throw a tomahawk

      from this bed and hit neither boat nor star

      from way down here,

      so far from water.

SPRING STORM

      My sister was young and bicycling before

      she died last night

      in my dream. Dreams aren’t subtle,

      she’d said to prove a point.

       Dreams don’t fuck around.

      People in my dreams age backward—

      my sister’s breasts still smaller than mine,

      her legs still

      longer, but I stay

      my awake-age, always.

      The wreck petrified

      the witnesses—a woman and her child,

      who both looked like me, except

      they wouldn’t talk,

      wouldn’t show me

      the body. She had pedaled

      into the road, been hit,

      which the newspaper

      detailed in its color pointillism

      photos—my sister in chalk

      outline, my sister’s bicycle

      a commemorative art display in the future.

      An older man had found her, had called

      the too-late ambulance—

      I could feel her missing

      from me, and her missing felt like my face

      waterlogged

      to violet, so I woke.

      In a thunderstorm,

      in our double-bed years

      before, she once hushed

      me, Don’t worry,

      but oh how

      she kicked in her sleep.

WHAT IF THROUGH A WINDOW, THOSE ONES?

      What if a person’s whole

      life were looking quietly

      out a window?

       That’s not a new idea, but whether it’s a sad story depends

       upon the view I reckon.

      What if outside the windows were the ancestors

      of your lover?

      Outside—a slow conveyer belt,

      a parade, a mugshot lineup, a reverse death

      march of the ones who made the one you love.

       Can covetousness break glass?

       Seep through the casement like a draft or

       a bad odor?

       How to thank—

      Do not think about the thoughts of the long-gone

      people on the other side

      of the window. They cannot see

      you and probably would not wish

      to if they could.

       But I thought our forebears look down on—

      This is not heaven. This is an exercise.

      With a window.

      This is an exercise on looking.

       Ah.

      What do you see?

       Aprons.

      Good. What is in the pockets of the aprons?

       Coins.

       I can’t make out the amounts or dates, but they are coins

       of varying circumference. No bills.

       The waistbands—some of them have

       rickrack or frills.

       Now I understand

       my fortune. Thank you.

      You cannot see inside the pockets.

       But you—

      You know nothing of the ones who made the one

      you love. You do not know

      their motivations or worries or hairdos except

      their worried eyes and picture-day hairdos.

      You do not know the wear

      of the tread on their bootsoles or whether they wore slippers to bed.

      This is not a metaphor.

      This is an exercise, an exercise

      on looking, which always means imagining,

      which means tying together right and wrong and half-right and half-wrong

      like a bouquet garni and tossing it thoughtlessly

      into the pot, steeping until having

       flavored everything.

ELEGY AT TWENTY-THREE

       for Brian

      Jon’s brother’s best friend died. She was twenty and likeable.

      I made a hamboat and brought over some Bud Light.

      Later we all went out to karaoke. I was sadder when my dog died,

      but I knew more what to do then, too.

      I always wore my seatbelt until this happened,

      when I stopped.

       What does all that even mean?

      In the paper a while back, I learned how at the zoo in my hometown

      an elephant’s fall resulted in cracked ribs and its killing—

      We went to karaoke. But they would only show the lyrics in Japanese,

      so really we were just dancing with our breath

      of tequila and French fries. Pop song,

      pop song, pop song:

      whatever we wanted, we thought we took it.

       Eliza’s hair was shorter than yours until you cut it then it was longer and she was dead.

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH GOLDEN AMMO

      Easter’s over, meaning it’s time again to resurrect

      my vices. Did that boulder Sisyphus