You were explaining

the sun at the table again

while I mouthed some more words

I picked up from the mouse

who’d held up beneath the dishwasher

seems there isn’t a fear

you found time to explain

in your tour of the universe

I hadn’t tried to entertain

at least once in my life.

A lone plane unsettles

this small country of china;

the sky, embattled gray

inches toward my defense

then thinks better of it.

I can’t think of a stranger place

for my hosts to keep radio parts.

They’ve seemed to catch

wind of my ruining either that

or the engineer hat is a give away.

Back when I was a lion

I escaped at a rest stop

and raked these poor picnickers—

what I’d do for a dart now

its hot liquid resolve

storming into my limbs.

A spoon is orbiting my head,

my pointy finger sticky with paste

from one of a long lists of projects

but you would never let on

having shifted to biplanes, volcanoes

even with my final tooth giving up

its dessert to flex into a snarl.

Mark DeCarteret (NH)  is the author of Review: A Book of Poems (Kettle of Fish Press, 1995), and two chapbooks. His work has appeared in AGNI, La Petite Zine, Phoebe, Salt Hill, and elsewhere.