Bobby Parrott
In the Pop-Up Book of My Life
My disclosing the pearly dream of us
talking with Tommy Heckwolf on the low grey
stone walls around the corner back then
opens to a silver jumbo-jet full of passengers
suddenly screaming its descent, fuselage
demolished headlong into the concrete slabs
of our back alley, reversed back to fully intact,
and how this century’s bleak puzzle-box punctures
the hapless finger of my pretend Valentine, spun
erect in this overlooked experiment. If I sip gently
from your hostile goblet, could you imagine
the challenge it’s been to grant the school
bullies their authority over the Oedipal leanings
vectored in my depleted mother? Surely you know
that when I squeeze my bike Little Wing’s handbrakes
past Monday my daylights are somehow put back
so your smooth-cut paperboard hinges can slide
open, contract their ransacked memories. Just think
of the summer days we’ve expanded, mesmerized
to the mental exhaust fan’s drone, chipped window
of shared bedroom, lattice of Venetian blinds
slicing the back alley. See the sketched selections
of me floating on those steel-spoke wheels
emerge in the pop-up book, beamish boy posed
behind his parents’ honeymoon telescope, stenciled
form, faraway scissors, accordion of paper dolls.
Entanglement of Trains
This could never be rehearsed,
this bestial intertwining
of bodies, this railroad
of ill-advised locomotives
before Big Bang’s pudding
expands to contract,
homesickness
be damned. Barely
post-placental, my engine
and caboose share too much
already, hungry hair
surrounding me
like a misconception.
I mimic your train’s
mid-trip switching, its easy
glide this side of the mountain,
tunnel entrance obscured
by clouds of delirious trees.
How they wave their razor
branches. How our mothers
love to hover.
Dine with Dionysius at the Apollonian!
Roasted beets with orange dream-sauce!
No wonder train food
is so expensive.
Up to me, we’d get off
at the next stop, unwind
this infantile tornado
and run for it.
But your oval face
bumps me back
on track
as our sleeper-cars
grind, click open
their rusty couplers.
Bobby Parrott is radioactive, but for how long? This queer poet's epiphany concerns the intentions of trees, and now his poems enliven dreamy portals such as Tilted House, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Diphthong, Exacting Clam, Neologism, and elsewhere. He lives in the unceded ancestral homelands of the Cheyenne, Arapahoe and Ute peoples now known as Colorado, with his partner Lucien, their top house plant Zebrina, and his hyper-quantum robotic assistant Nordstrom.