Robert Krut
__________________________________________________________________________________________
OWL SWALLOWS MOUSE, SPACESHIP SWALLOWS MAN
Thank you for inviting me to your spaceship,
my intergalactic twin, fingerprint-less from another world,
where we hover above the suburban streets
just above the phone lines and range of hummingbird flight—
control panel sprouting arms of levers,
blurry photographs of maps line the walls,
the dash displaying an ice-cold jar of milk,
a glass eye resting at its bottom.
The floor, crinkled tin with poked holes
for sight, for watching inside the homes with
their translucent roofs for our observation.
Everyone is asleep, but for one at a window—
he breathes onto the windowpane, traces a finger
across the cloud to write a name,
wipes it clean with a pajama sleeve
before laying down to stare up at our craft.
Thank you for letting me fly with a manner
that does not feel like flying
so much as simply holding the air,
the air holding me.
There is no one moving on the street
save the stray cat that pulls its back
tight in a stretch, gives up on catching the owl
that spreads it wings and lifts to our ship,
glides straight through an opening
in the floor, a lifeless white mouse in its mouth—
pulls the ship higher, and away.
THE GLASS JARS
The Santa Ana winds knock over a wine bottle,
roll it down the driveway, sound a hollow chorus.
I walk out to the midnight
heat, the rising air encouraging me to
lift a loose fingernail like a hatch—
ten fireflies exit my hand.
Down the road, a man approaches,
spotlit by the flickering streetlights,
his head wrapped in a gauzy scarf, goggles on—
he pushes a shopping cart of empty
glass jars, their movement sending
a jittery message in high-pitched Morse code.
His cart signals the glass of a dream—
a firefly swims a coil in each of his jars.
I knew he was coming,
know time doesn’t hide anything, really.
When he passes,
I am a tree in the yard,
I am a shadow under a branch,
waving from wind that moves deliberately through the street,
through the scarf across his face
and back in time to start it all over again.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Krut is the author of This is the Ocean (Bona Fide Books, 2013), which received the Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Award, as well as The Spider Sermons (BlazeVox, 2009). His poems have appeared widely in print and online (including past issues of poemeleon). He lives in Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara. More information can be found at www.robertkrut.com/homepage.