My Sister Was a Chair
       

I was the monkey in pieces
who sang out loud,
who stood in the backyard
looking out into the trees and called
to the timbers of the house,
Cousin and Mother and Father
and climbed to the roof
to throw myself outward and downward
like a stick in a dishonest Y.
Truthfully there was some applied imagination
and a bit of the divine
I clamped tightly between my jaws.
All the dog next door remembers
is a loose assortment of teeth
and a thump to the west.
Everyone wanted the truth to be like water.
I tried to bring it to them,
but what I wanted more
kept leaving my body for the ground.
Why what singing was in me
was not remembered by others as well.

Copyright © 2009 Jorn Ake All rights reserved
from The Circle Line
The Backwaters Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission