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The Wheelchair Butterfly
O sleepy city of reeling wheelchairs where a mouse can commit suicide if he can concentrate long enough on the history book of rodents in this underground town of electrical wheelchairs! The girl who is always pregnant and bruised like a pear rides her many-stickered bicycle backward up the staircase of the abandoned trolleybarn. Yesterday was warm. Today a butterfly froze in midair; and was plucked like a grape by a child who swore he could take care of it. O confident city where the seeds of poppies pass for carfare, where the ordinary hornets in a human’s heart may slumber and snore, where bifocals bulge in an orange garage of daydreams, we wait in our loose attics for a new season as if for an ice-cream truck. An Indian pony crosses the plains whispering Sanskrit prayers to a crater of fleas. Honeysuckle says: I thought I could swim. The Mayor is urinating on the wrong side of the street! A dandelion sends off sparks: beware your hair is locked! Beware the trumpet wants a glass of water! Beware a velvet tabernacle! Beware the Warden of Light has married an old piece of string!