Only Wasps Come When We Call for Robins

Sunspots arrive
beating furious the front door

hello gunpowder
hours later fireworks will splinter

sounds over telephone wires
goodbye fresh strawberries

everything plump and cold
in a wire basket

will enter the sky
and rot from above

•

Sunlight through screen
makes a system of pulleys

in theory, in practice:
my puppet dull limbs

lie mute
clutching the receiver

now repeat after me:

our brave shoulder, he’s
too much burnt rubble
boxed love handles
missing a heartbeat

but I meant to say, mother

hello sweet heroine or aha! heliotrope

the shirt when I am an old woman I’ll wear

violet bloodstones
facing sun and wearing thin

where I sit
and imitate your profile

steadily hammering
stone into silk

•

Fear you’ve woven
too much muffled longing
fallen still
stained glass posture

drawing shapes in a dark room

because home is where
we learned to say:
he’s gone, gray trace

learned, nearly 2000 miles
after you dialed, to howl

—pretty bones and all—
I’m dead at both ends

Bay Point Trigger Finger

There I go again
born from a bubbly underbelly

envision this tunnel
swift incision under

my glass eye
my goose-necking

at gorgeous white cranes
grim giants, giraffing the city

the baited slate sky
climbs another steel notch

today’s etched on my scalp
where some pigeon shit piled

and still clouds my periphery
pretend it’s a crown

it’s a critical gesture
a little elbow jutting

outturned pockets
never hurt anyone’s

gut ego subway diatribe
gimme another inch

finding brutish windows
tagged by fogbreath

you call this weather?
what’s all this birdish

knocking tooth and tail and
why this feather-stained smile

you ask? A fear of falling
in love with old oil drums

soot-smudged caboose
or thug-boned tugboats.

I’m speaking of rooms
where the water lines are

dotted white a shockproof forecast
our time locked in sheer threads

Since when is my gait jaunty
my jousting rod

hammer-tooth jaw so ready
squashing ants with one hand

or purse-snatching
stale gum

Since when is my gameface
gawk-worthy

daily draw a poker hand
of Siamese twins

the east coast
the west boasting

sailboats or snake eyes
swallow and repeat

the odds just get odder
the sun gets wiped clean

and oh, the brilliant bubble people
in brittle spit-shined shoes

going surefire apeshit
in bullet-shaped cars

make their mad bee-hive drive
up into the hills, honey

where every smirk in the saddle is
a bully’s wet dream

talking buttercups and sunsets, baby
your cheeks burst, aglow

So that when I say
come trundle me under

I mean thumb-tucking
belt loops, sweating soupbowls

if we’re set on spinning
our bottle cap eyelids

let’s just get beaked up
broth into a trance

Steffi Drewes currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a contributing poetry editor for MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine. Some of her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bombay Gin, Phoebe, Shampoo, American Letters & Commentary, and BlazeVOX, among others. Her manuscript, Wheel to Wing, was selected as a finalist for Switchback Books’ 2008 Gatewood Prize.