Spring-Loaded
by K.A. Keener
The force that drives the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age.
—Dylan Thomas, 1934
Water flung from my fingers
sprung against the skillet’s copper-heat.
A particle-push away/against
it tries to make a sail of itself,
the taut energy of escape,
the foot arched, the John Wayne
westerns where bad guys shoot
at the feet of good ones.
(dance, dance)
I think of your hand
down my pants
our breath, jagged.
The heat could force
even water onto tip-toe.
(dance, dance)
There’s a fugue in here we won’t let
the downbeat swallow. Under
the window, the trees are forcing green
paper tongues from their branches.
Party-favors of Spring.
The bushes near the church burst tiny
tight blossoms, their folds scrunched
like faces of babies crying. Even
the birds lift from the telephone wires
like so many tossed graduation caps.
Someone has discovered
when a dog wags its tail to the right
it acts out of wariness,
to the left, anticipation. Someone else
filmed an elephant paddling underwater.
Outside the rains rain
making clean the new green,
making dirtier everything else.
Someone has left a mattress
slumped against the lightpost
for big trash pick-up. Its springs
rim the surface of its polyester roses.
Two spring-loaded fake snakes catch
the breath of a child opening a box.
Our days turn sticky, garish, gag-spent.
Almost every big item gets picked up
on the first Sunday of the month:
Big Trash Day and the matinee,
the bad guys kill or are killed,
sometimes laughing. But not yet. Now it’s time
to add the oil and garlic, for its everyday
scent to chase the newly-hatched mosquitoes
from my kitchen, for its steam to frizz
broken hairs at the crown of my head.
Lines have formed at the creases of my eyes,
my skin elastic-slack. And I try
not to think of the worn-out
waistbands of discarded clothing.
Again, I run my hand under
the cold tap, flicking the excess
again into its pan dance.
