from Fine Little Hammer

11

The man seems moving

but most of him


is an instrument carved

from a horse’s bone but most


of him is an apple

gone to waste






12

Bastard scatter and chorus

of house sparrows weaves


roof and treetops

Smugglers dug three tunnels


each a half-mile long

Mexico to Texas






13

Wake up thinking watery

walls and ceiling the solid


world greets you

Wind undoes what she’d say


about distance and presence

translates snow into snow


into rooftops into what

and what


The woman sits in her chair

having small strokes






14

Ice glazed window half a day

I’m my own silhouette


Is arrival the result of flight

or flight


Horizon surges to become a couple

walking, thinking meat and sunlight


It seemed possible to outrun plague

or at least deny our tracks


in its crawl spaces

Her two sons fist fight over


the family Bible






15

Blue light morning

I can’t turn on the news


Tired of waking to tunnels

I fabricate an all open


a peripheral something

to keep my head turning






16

Sparrow’s flight lines

against snow aren’t


sparrows or snow


Snow and thunder

interrogate my season


and the sound is a house

haunting itself


Imagine shut in a little room

with all that world inside






17

“Birds’ feet relax by closing”

is no cure for clockwork clocks


Tired of each thing as it

happens, my wind-up


apologies are overdrawn

The music is irreparable


a series of how many

hole-punched suns














Mike Sikkema is living in Buffalo, NY, reading about the limbic system and theories of the primitive in art.






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