Thrown as if Fierce & Wild
You don’t have a clue, says the power drill to the canoe hanging from the rafters. Is life a contest everything plays by different rules for different prizes? You’re really worthless, aren’t you? barks the cherry tree covered with eponymous fruit to the wagon lying on its side. Unfair! Wasn’t that wagon not two days ago leading the parade, the puppy refusing to wear her hat? Can’t you just leave me alone? says the big picture of Marilyn Monroe behind her nonreflective glass. Is the universe infinity in ruckus and wrack? The third grader loose in dishwares, the geo-tech weeping on the beach. Mine, mine, says the squirrel to the transformer, unclear on the capacities of electricity. String of Christmas lights tangled with extension cords, can’t you work things out? The young couple takes a step toward the altar, increasing the magnetic force that sends ex-lovers whirling off into nether nebulae but attracting mothers-in-law. In one wing, the oxygen mask taken from the famous writer of terza rema glee while in another an infant arrives, loudly disappointed to have to do everything now himself, no longer able to breathe under water. Will we never see our dead friends again? A motorcycle roars on the terrible screw of the parking structure, lava heaves itself into the frigid strait.
From Elegy on Toy Piano, by Dean Young, © 2005. Reprinted with permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.