We Are Different in This Room

I want to be a dump truck driver.
I spend each summer day after mom feeds me
cinnamon toast in the sun along the fence spooning
yellow soil from one place, crushing clods
into the truck tray. Red. Like important things.
I found a marble. Blue. Like the eye of someone
in a book. I found a buffalo nickel under a skin
of moss over by where the neighbor gets mad.
Like Popeye without the muscles.
His daughter brought two kids to live back home.
We make up stories and act them out
beneath the spruce, its branch tips touch the dirt.
There’s a room inside
you can make be anywhere you want.

The Sailors All Dance and Sing As Their Ship Goes Down

A.K.A. cheer up, little thunder cloud. Walk
like your feet needn’t apologize to the soil.
It’s feces and rotted skin, heads and fingers
and what comes from animal noses. It’s true
they built vacation hotels better in the 1920s.
Rows of rocking chairs facing out to sea.
Broad sheets of unbleached muslin for shade.
People all looked like birds at a distance.
A boardwalk going straight out to the water,
pointing at the land across the waves,
which is built principally from our dreams.
Yes, we know real people live there, but
for ten minutes one day on this once-a-year
vacation can we just have a place for our
hopes to land once they’ve clawed their way
out the front of our face. Put your arm
around me. Let’s go become a shipwreck.