Petrifying Jack Things

Unguent horsehair. Horse people glued together by bits of hoof. Deer people. Jack-in-the-Box people. Our spirit mammals. Jack Torrance trapped in his house, wrapped in his head, while Jack Sprat haunts no-fat food. Then there’s Jack with his bean stalk stalking jackfruit. We frame our Jacks and nail them to our coffin headboards. They mirror us in mirrors. They shift mood and tense depending on our fear level. The jack-o-lantern lighters savor them in our dreams. Mother guffaws. Father and Jack do too. Wisp phantoms hide in the divine jack pine forests. As do jackdaws, dressed for the midnight masquerade, and Night shudders. Night’s wide padded shoulders. We stutter, enveloped by the shrieks of jagged Night. All the lichen laugh. Our goose flesh bumps into Night’s knife, the heat of Night, the seat in Night’s sleigh. Shredded Wheat Night, watery milk we wade in to travel through Night and the Milky Way. Jack jumps over the candlestick. Toward windows he’ll creep while we’re asleep. He puts in his thumb and pulls it out. A plum! All the boys are Jack now. Nimblest at slipping through cracked windows, spired domiciles, riding their loping wild neighs.

Mountain

Clip-clop and underground cicadas clank as first echoes of walking
mountain unmoors the morning.

Mountain-crossing dressed as a cross-dressing mountain, dragging its train
over Yellow Earth, sweeping up crumbs of lives in its wake.

Mountain sits on the throne of a passageless passage of time.
Sentiency pinned to mountain as a butterfly to a mesh net.

Mountain removes its skirts—Layers of textile cover the dancing, ecstatic,
never-static mountain. It disrobes in spring, steps out of the wedding dress at winter’s end.

Mountain churns the oceanic pot; it bellows into a hallowed abyss of emptiness,
lassoing mountains with woven fogbows of light.

From where we stand, we can’t see mountain though perceive its height and sleight of hand.
Mountain humbly bows and hums in our ear.

Mountain as earth’s primal tree with roots combing the underworld;
its crown commanding the firmament by ropy wands of wind.

All night mountain prays on its knees, shuckling, davening
to the divine feet that tread its rocky skin.

The Older One Becomes, the More Out of Order Time Comes to Be

Between stage and spectators, our assemblage of visitant relatives
debate over the recent debacle: mother has fallen

off Humpty Dumpty’s wall, has broken vibrational string-theory threads,
has cracked the relative mirror in which we watch others who behave

as our worst selves, our wolf selves, mocking us
from our bathroom mirror where we play hide-and-seek with time.

Today the family unit unites in a unisonous performance,
superimposing its appearance from a half century ago.

The children are willing to resume old roles as frightened youngsters
of a frightened young mother. They singsong lines from bygone eras,

whereas mother refuses to mimic the body-memory motions
of being alive, and lies all day on a bed, which will be recast as her deathbed

that the children purchased for this theatrical revival. Mother refuses to play
her role as savior, and the children roll mother over. She shifts from right

to left and lolls. The family says it has run out of lines, the narrative thread
snipped. The family says it doesn’t know what happens next. They know

what will happen but cannot say without lines, and then the apparition
of father manifests at the foot of mother’s bed. Death has entered

through the fourth wall in father’s guise. Violent death who awaits, waves
his arms and spits curses into the family’s mouth. He orders

mother to accept his proposal. He slams his fist
into the children’s chests, and they wail. They rent their garments

as father sucks out mother’s breath with a deep marital kiss,
draping inky velvet cloth over brimstone mirrors.