Wind Chimes, Too<\/p>\n
These used to be wine bottles. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Girders<\/p>\n The teacher underlined her words to lift them out of our reach.<\/p>\n Sometimes I wonder why I\u2019ve never seen a bird trip over a telephone wire.<\/p>\n As children we thought that the airplane wings would be soft.<\/p>\n Perhaps if they had left the raising to the fields we would have spoken birds.<\/p>\n At the edges we were afraid not of jumping, but of jumping without reprimand.<\/p>\n To you falls are objects, like drops; larger droplets: something to leave dirt matted to roots.<\/p>\n I walk down the hill and think that everything with doors could be empty without my knowledge.<\/p>\n I want to tell you that the fields are not empty if you crouch<\/p>\n And that Cantonese is the closest language to birdsong<\/p>\n And that the hillside sways under a weight with no upper bound\u2014a ray back to the sun.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kaleidoscopy<\/p>\n If the astronauts put a mirror over Kentucky, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wind Chimes, Too These used to be wine bottles. She is growing, they say, but it is not so much becoming taller as zooming out. At dark she shines a flashlight through the glass, watches the beam grow fat as it runs from her, and says that maybe the sun is just someone holding a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[327,328],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nShe is growing, they say, but it is not
\nso much becoming taller
\nas zooming out. At dark she shines
\na flashlight through the glass, watches
\nthe beam grow fat as it runs
\nfrom her, and says that maybe the sun
\nis just someone holding a flashlight
\na year or so away. Her toad waddles
\nacross the parking lot
\nand she says as he grows smaller
\nthat \u201cspecimen\u201d should be plural
\nand only plural. Lines
\nare everywhere, but hidden, like the ones
\nat the edges of the page\u2014there
\nout of necessity, she says, because
\nthe photographer\u2019s job is to flatten.
\nLast year she was small enough to cut
\nher fingers on sharp wind. She hums
\ninto the bottles and caps them, so she\u2019ll echo
\nforever, and she sings into cupped hands
\non still days because wind chimes, too,
\nneed breath. The sun glistens back again
\nfrom the curve of my watch and I think:
\nPerhaps this is the face of God.<\/em>
\nI say the cracks in the vase
\nlook like veins. She says the hole in the base
\nmakes the walls a windpipe, loud
\nsimply because it is not soft.
\nAll sounds are siblings in her world,
\nand her fingers snap like rubber bands
\nor cheap guitar strings
\nor bread dough stretched too far
\nor the twitch of an insect\u2019s tiny limbs
\nor the cold\u2014silent tonight
\nagainst the windowpane.<\/p>\n
\nwe could wave to the president
\nfrom Kansas. The galaxies move, not
\nbecause there\u2019s wind in space,
\nbut because the aliens are bigger
\nthan we drew them. Maybe
\nthey define water differently.
\nNow I\u2019m imagining slicing a circle
\nfrom the kaleidoscope walls, then twisting
\na figure eight and tricking my brain
\ninto showing me what my eyes saw first.
\nAfter we fell asleep the television hosts
\nstarted watching us, since the world must
\nbe observed at all points, and we dreamed
\nthat the world dreamed with us. The wars
\nfaded during breakfast. I\u2019m inventing a river
\nthat moves in circles, rolling under itself instead
\nof forwards. We\u2019re calling it the water wheel.
\nHe insisted that the bottle was only shaking
\nbecause it couldn\u2019t hold its liquor. If the sound
\nis looped, then there must be something
\non either side of the skip. To walk home
\nwith clean hands is a crime
\nin the world she scented with paint.
\nThey dyed the cast blue before the show
\nand called it a game of chance. If our eyes
\nare closed, then all of this
\nthat we dream should happen
\nupside down. Maybe we have eyes
\nthat look inside, too.
\nI don\u2019t remember the rest.<\/p>\n