Mathias Svalina & Julia Cohen
poems from When We Broke the Microscope
T h r o u g h T h e M i c r o s c o p e t h e B o y S e e s t h e G a l e
freeze his wolf fur into boxes of baking soda.
Eyes made of cabbage-holes & pinecones. His sister
on the swing-set, a jutting snout arced & beaded.
She hums the tune her blood darts.
She is holding a glass ball of hair in her paws.
When the windmills topple & the quarry fills with rain
there is only one choice left for the siblings:
carry the quartz in a rucksack, help each other
down the ravine with four spare hands. Those who
do not will overstay their welcome just by being alive.
A path leading to the den. A betrayal spindled out
into a branch-like view. It's important to have
a decent meal every once in a while.
E v e n t h e S h a r d s o f H o u s e s C o n t a i n a B i t o f W h e a t
A fingerprint yellows into a bar of soap,
fang-marked & dropped behind the radiator.
Potpourri clots the pup's snout, wrinkled
in longing for the bark-muddied chase.
At the grocers, the fist is too soft & then the stock-boy
reshelves it. In the window, family is a cardboard prop
resembling television. The wolf pup cries
into a larger chest, is taken home, combed & denned.
Pup this, pup that. Fur me & rock me cave-dark,
like a body of water tiny enough to cup. If you'd allow
the painted walls to flake, my face could lather
into un-jealousy. Later, I could join the pups
in their pillows, goodnight-stories are wheat cased
from the porch & braided through their ears.
I could, if you'd let me pretend.
W h e n W e C i r c l e t h e G r a n d P i a n o
Three wolf pups curl inside a shell of rock candy,
a toothache for animals, an airplane growing smaller.
Flame on the forearm, choke of cloth lining
the leaving cheek: these are the paths through
a wolf's ribs. The aviatrix sees wolf-ants
below the wing. Wipes her goggles with a silk scarf.
The cirrus clouds scratch the plains,
fingernails over the shoulder blades,
leaving white lines that fade into red. The pups
follow the plane's shadow into foliage & cotton candy.
They collect coins from soda bottles
left by the hikers with bird-legged walking sticks.
They twist each other with rubberbands
& sugar, they will never marble like a name.
For only one week a year, if you look directly into the sun
& then run forward, you will travel too far to circle back.
You will find yourself in the murmur of wolf den.
Dried bones in the corner, photographs of tomorrow's prey
wheat-pasted to the wall . Pockets so heavy
with coins you sink into the asphalt,
the jukebox of wolfcries. You used to save
nickels to remind yourself of the moment a child
cups his hands around a sprig of light & squeezes
it shut. The first mistake is a stack of tires blocking the den.
The second is melody played through the blood of your ears.
The pup nips your shank. The plane smolders in the
background of the photograph, becomes
the cross of a goat's eye. The plane begins to shake
like a grand piano clawed into meat. Candlestick bones
light the way. You've circled back against the greater will.
Pups lean in, the circle has an inside & an
outside. The outside is light & the other, fur
cottoned to a human heart. It was never blood on the hand.
It was blood on the lip. The aviatrix unties the scarf
around her throat & steps into the darkest of dens.
She rolls the tire in front of the hole, rests
in the daguerreotype of a stuffed wolf posed between
two mirrors. She picks burrs from her ankles, speaks
in musk to the circle. The circle responds
in the language of flight. Black morning
of fur, toothache in the aviatrix snarl. You’ll
rest when her tail ties around your candied pup.
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