Читать книгу Rodeo in Reverse - Lindsey Alexander - Страница 11

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Dog that won’t stop barking and all I can think:

I don’t know anything about stars—

not what they’re called or how they form, but how

we turn stars into stickers to surprise

our children and assure them You are better

than normal children.

On boat decks, sailors cry out Orion!

and they see a man,

but they’ve only drawn stick-figure self-portraits

of fire and longing.

I tried to sketch

my face one night with stronger brow lines,

higher cheekbones, but it was all nose, scaly

water moccasin: a viper me.

I paid someone who drew me in

red with big hair, gaunter—

the way he drew me made me

see how lonely he thought I was. I rolled

that portrait with wax paper and a rubber band,

look at it during the Lenten season.

That same spring or summer on the back of a boat, I caught a sunfish, baited him

with gum. I didn’t like unhooking him—

tore his lip. Astrologists

shape stars into fish, take cracks at

decoding futures. Palm-reading hocus-pocus:

on my hand—which is starboard,

port, and which is solar flare?

I could use that hand to throw a tomahawk

from this bed and hit neither boat nor star

from way down here,

so far from water.