New Poem

Inversion

The living shuffle swiftly
in sleeper’s dreams,
soft and on time
like the spinning
of the escalator’s grooved tread.

They have husbands
that stare at them
while they cower
from building to shopping cart to bed.

These men have the
dark faces of TNT.
Mouths like a window pane
with a hole punched through.

In therapy,
the living and their husbands
fight taking turns:
moth exiting flame;
scissor mending curtain.

What dreams
didn’t the alligator eat?

At 5 p.m. the roads disappear;
roll up and vanish
like the ever-replaced top stair
of the escalator.

Beds fill with couples,
the smell of their fatigue
like the rough sound of
dry hands moving down the sheets
near the places
they will hibernate in like reptiles
until the dreamers wake.