Post Office Lounge: rough draft from '03

Cookie with a spiral of cinnamon
Sugar crystals planets congealed
From rivers of honey
The cinnamon from jungles
spiraling in the cookie
From plantations watered by rivers
In which mothers launder and unbind
Hair contesting Rapunzel’s
Cinnamon that doesn’t grow on trees,
languid as the air it clouds—
Money more likely from trees
than the spice of a cookie
flotillas carry to your doorstep

And how the cookie crumbles
in the toothless laugh of a package handler
after he dips it in a Pepsi foam
throwing his head back [with a hiss].
Nature abhors a waste of air


[Orpheus taming the beasts]

In a painted bestiary,
the Himalayan tiger lives beside
the eucalyptus-chewing panda
nudging him with a silver paw.
Behind two giant penguins tower,
stare through the vanity mirrors
of the postal handlers’ lounge.
Perspective is generous, peace this window.

She devours microwavable mini-pizzas
at the table across. With her around
no chance to change the channel
from the soaps. She's on contract.

in the washroom, beyond the sorting machines
referred to by four digit numbers, zeros gratis,
farther even than the thousand-yard stare

go beyond the walls containing our life
in epistles or Kraft-paper packages

from loved ones or strangers with gifts
The networks dissolved in a glass,
that's how the cookie crumbles
The one with Afro and the saucer eyes