fingers of the hairdresser

part I.

around my head is a pony that changes shape.
the crystal daylight kisses my tail
                                        and is forgotten.
the color of a dewdrop stings.
the plow is a mothball of song
                                              in
creamy stucco for
                           benthic pilgrims,
                           for
                           sky’s burning feet.
the blowgun is a mace
                           for maori who care to notice.
above tablelands crawling boulders
                                                pick fights.
handsome and benighted,
sugary and cracked and limpid
                                   as a devilfish,
a noose is pulled around weeping.
museums in-
                  sist on
pan-
or-
amas
not dead. tank convoys,
                  butter pats,
                  sequined eyelids,
                  barrel-chested animations
threaten my good name.
                                             the handle
                                             of messiah
dances with cupcakes in his hands.
i am finished when anemones soil
                        the water and clownfish
                        die.



part II.

there is something.
               listen to bravery
as a suffocating
        kodiak
searches for ice floes.

                                         tides are unguarded by gravity.

whiptails smell ancestors in every direction
and they usher along the squeaking pebbles that could
have filled
buckets. so even though
                               the fingerprints
                               weren’t 
mine, they moved like my hand dipped in
                                                                      butter.

part III.

once kings were graphics for birds of paradise.
the flannel crisped in
time;
cavities
in
be-
havior
were glass-
bottomed
boats trailing horse latitudes. the volcanic
puppets
are still iceland without strings,
tristan da cunha
                  without wind.
i am forced to listen to roll-
                                          ing wagons
of the donner (bless the noisemakers) party.
where are the women who sell candied yams
? where is the perfect sprinkle
of a coma-diet? which element, do i guess, is
filthy enough to chew?

part IV.

queens were publications of cassowaries -
thick fibers of falling clouds. chicken 
                                                    little.
at any throat are ribbons of the maypole.
the scheme of taffy bites down
                                              hard
                                              here in
                                              this jagged
sequestration of rice.
poor sacks. prisons of agriculture.
a sign for evacuation is not to be taken seriously.
scraps of
heredity
never
cancelled out
in-
fes-
ta-
tion. my coconuts lost bargaining power once
they hit the ground. beetles
                                     sang
of                                  the sharpness
loud
knives. little bones pressed in cages
             were beating hearts. little test
             tubes were songs of another
             monkey. my contrapuntal history
             is a burlap finger in ice.

part V.

singular attention is drawn to the caustic
                                                             veil if
it minimizes your image or
a bagful of mussels never escape.
when you eat that fruit
                                  salad
there are deviations for vegetables:
i call you one.
                  through pekoe tea
the apartment you live in
                           is cherry soda.
with the wash-
ing
done
         your caramel eye-
                                  lashes
are underwear closer 
than                               all the
                                        dirt in the world.

livelier than christmas ornaments
             shattering,
salt and pepper snakes observing
                             pentecost
is the fir tree caught on fire. but
no one on the face of civilization
                          will listen if i
                                                 have
global                                      aphasia.
and gingivitis is
a
yellow drool not to be traded for
persimmons or
oleander       or
bottlenecked blood going northward.

part VI.

luxury quakes/small eyelets are untied/ wounded
basilisk/ sand unperched to drift/seventeen hours
and no baby/ tears are muttering/ soft beans don’t
need midwives/the car hisses a sliding coatrack/don’t
fear the penumbra of any fool/image of goatcheese
and i shrivel/we pick crescent moons/
                       the sky waits for fingernails/
surgeries in greenland and antarctica/sun-browned
furniture/poodles vomit at curbside/one polyester-
wheedled touch/one picture of dorian gray/ one
for the money/ and my nose ziplocked/ passenger
pigeons/moas/great auks/dodos/incognito/and we
have billions.

part VII.


that symbiont has exposed herself to self.
that matador waits for blood and capes.
that southern conference of bishops is sissifying birth
and piliated woodpeckers are the souls of silence.
and the aquifer percolating –
and the tongue dyspeptic –
and the ugly confluences of spittle and chess 
are where my napkin ends,
and stitches of the penguins’ wings
are dreams of the night.


bird province

small concrete confections slurped through prehistoric teeth
are the crumbs of castanets gnashed too wildly.
they fall like feather,
float like rain in a wind that is chocolate and
vanilla and brick.
in a somewhere of temperature and
breadth and pressure
and whispers of crying,
dreams are infantilized
that clutch like skunk stink
with colorful warnings.

i said to you that limitations are folded
into prerequisites of dying; that cold
noses are a prelude to suffocation;
that passenger pigeons never really
disappeared. and
bird pain, nonetheless, jimmies
a lock on time, and look
what dinosaurs have become in the
midst of extinction. soporifics
blight the need for breaking mirrors
although i could use some bad
luck to pat down a new grave-
site
or to compress minor delusions
into the speak of a helium balloon
that bellyflops and spits without fear
dripping from its eyes. and when
i pass the tungsten and bitterness
flooding the road, a caramel color
is a flightless ditch and
my knuckles are butterscotch
tasting of rain. hold your screams,
I’m not listening. the fabric of
lamplight pours off your plucked skin
and witches tell 
tales i can’t ignore when forests
are broken and i see you hardening in mud
at the mouth of a river.



homecoming

i wasn’t afraid of the wolf,
it salivated like a warm sponge
and lowered its head like a bull.
there was a current in the water
singing past palisades;
timbering sunlight.
and i was sure that coming home didn’t
require a key or fishing for loose change.
the canoe wouldn’t take me that far, anyway.
i could’ve carried time in wheelbarrows
if clocks were, in fact, hands without bodies.
or weight scurried down pointless years,
and chimneys had never smoked.
the sundried cats i see are apple cores
grown cerebral in asphalt.
mercury still measures temperature but
no longer poisons.
there’s too much rubble here to cascade
only from skyscrapers bent and chewed on but
boots are water cannons
and insects are filigreed and heavy
with the muscles of condors and
carnage plummets from the sun.
forests are always in the way:
i’ve found a blanket of painted burlap with
the crispness of fog:
when i find a door half open, half decided,
i’ll re-schedule a greeting: lift a hand
in a gesture of morning; bring down
the axe on the rest of the day and asphyxiate
with one lung in my hand.
there was a cold front waiting for me;
the breath spirited away and
buried itself like a spore.



mechanoreceptors

the prison suppurates in shock;
creased with jacketed stone.
carry the dentist’s drill.
                 spill a caravan of sand.
i can’t fill a fleshy hand with bone -
the
cavities
sing in a vacuum. i will replace
blood flow for breathing; i will suture
a bull’s snout to a faceless minotaur. and

then
i’ll spit proteins to gel in
atmospheric grease,
resonating like wind
                           chimes.

cauldrons are ripe with recipes:
bluefin tuna on archaeological expeditions:
those ocean trenches dry as stone.

sundown is waiting for me as
a canyon buys time: the purge
of a mirror is the fear i want.

and maybe
the morning’s butter can slip
                                              down
                                              my fingers
in cataracts
    and billfolds and
                                  euclid’s elements will
stay still until they are finally counted.    

Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College. His stuff has appeared or, is forthcoming, in Helix, Rabid Oak, The Blue Collar Review, Call Me, Rise Up, Old Pal, and others. His collection “Dead Calls and Walk-Ins” chronicles his work as a taxi driver several centuries ago.