Triangles

Call

It's after midnight here
when the phone leaps,
a jack-in-the-box unsprung
and like a child
before its first white-faced clown
I am on neither side of hope nor fear
just breathing.

Then: the jangle of lives
down what we picture as simple lines
stretched round through the night
to where it gets lighter
and sparrows surf the wires
in the wind, the hum of our talk
a tingling in their bones.

As I hunch at the receiver
on seesaw of sleep
and excitement
I can hear someone
slice up the afternoon
in yellow wedges
for their bread and
in the clatter of cutlery,
car keys, costume jewellery,
a spinning coin
against the smooth plane
of a voice:
my heart as it ricochets win-to-lose
with the guesswork
of what news.

It's Spring

we're all made of flashy edges
we're all on edge, we're on the edge
of something and the most minute
is a taut spring that flips us over:
I snip out photos from a magazine,
the scissor blades wake the cat
with their soft unoiled chirrup
and he is ecstatic,
he uncoils in the air
with the back leg kick
of a released jack rabbit;
while Catherine's mouth waters
as the blades slice paper with the sound
of shredded iceberg lettuce—
she could eat a field—
Glenn feels the sound
like the lift of the mail flap
then the rip of an envelope
chock with a language
that all means yes:
to me it's a burst
of teeth into fat grapes,
or something like this.