Caitlin Plunkett
The Jungle Gym
Mechanical gulls and crows.
When it got late, the great
moon rose behind them
and the night’s damp breeze
filmed their beady eyes and
still—the mystery of lightness,
the chemistry between the real
and the superimposed.
Made with paper maché, wiring
and motorized wings, these
silhouette crows gather in rows
while a teacher sings.
When it got late, the great
moon rose behind them
and the night’s damp breeze
filmed their beady eyes and
still—the mystery of lightness,
the chemistry between the real
and the superimposed.
Made with paper maché, wiring
and motorized wings, these
silhouette crows gather in rows
while a teacher sings.
The Notorious Man
A small boy beneath a marquis of rubied letters.
Inside: his feet sticky to the floor, the crackling
strips of film, and Ingrid Bergman looms
on screen, speechless, a type of rose in his mother’s garden.
He imagines he is the one in the grey suit
with slicked hair, well into his forties with immaculate
movie star hands. Hands that hold pistols carefully
as if they were a woman’s wrists. And after,
he runs home and decides he will have strange
love affairs in small, dark apartments.
The streetlights’ sheen protects him from the woods
and from what he hopes are bird-less trees.
Inside: his feet sticky to the floor, the crackling
strips of film, and Ingrid Bergman looms
on screen, speechless, a type of rose in his mother’s garden.
He imagines he is the one in the grey suit
with slicked hair, well into his forties with immaculate
movie star hands. Hands that hold pistols carefully
as if they were a woman’s wrists. And after,
he runs home and decides he will have strange
love affairs in small, dark apartments.
The streetlights’ sheen protects him from the woods
and from what he hopes are bird-less trees.
The Casual Lover
I fall into the space between their silhouettes. I’ll do that, I think.
I’ll do that on a train car’s pull-down bunk where the stars can see me.
While the window rattles its cool light. While the sound of the razor
slipping down the sink is clean as falling ice.
The camera pans to cities in the distance, sparkling
with power plants—cities beyond the crop fields swept in silver and
the crop duster who chases down his foolish love of night. The bi-plane’s
shadow, a rope around my neck. It ends in a miniature impact
and plumes of smoke rise like curled fists to blot the moon.
My tongue crawls her white throat like smoke.
I’ll do that on a train car’s pull-down bunk where the stars can see me.
While the window rattles its cool light. While the sound of the razor
slipping down the sink is clean as falling ice.
The camera pans to cities in the distance, sparkling
with power plants—cities beyond the crop fields swept in silver and
the crop duster who chases down his foolish love of night. The bi-plane’s
shadow, a rope around my neck. It ends in a miniature impact
and plumes of smoke rise like curled fists to blot the moon.
My tongue crawls her white throat like smoke.