Above: my neighbor’s feet,                         fussing from room to room,                velvet hooves                     tendering my head. Was the fruitcakecurdling? Would the mail make it there on time? (it must                make it there on time)? Below:                 I try to lightthe stove. Little clicks of the tongue, heat and water,                     my altar.                Underground: my grandfather breathes through a silk jacket,a dandelion mane resting between                         his lips. Here: every living                thing is an altar. Sweet worms kiss           his knuckles to sleep,loose doorknobs I open:             story after story. My family:                a spiral staircase, a fish spine                    picked clean, the snail’smiasmic song. 1982: sun gasping through splintering snow,                a lemon slice folded                     in my mother’s cup, a generousbulb, a lighthouse across oceans she can not see. 1985: we slept in                a split-level attic,                                    squirrels running acrossthe beams. 1964: my grandfather offers my mother one egg.                Her brother looks on, fists full of ash. 1967: to makethe body dance with sticks and stones to break                 alone. Within:                prison, rose finch feathers float through bars, what he can nottalk about. My grandfather sings to me in a ladybug-speckled coffin,                the color of good teeth.                   Above: my grandmother keepsheaps upon heaps of oil containers, poured                     and repurposed                in hunched Fanta plastic. This living can be so quiet sometimes,you can hear the lights                 humming. Moss slinks into my walls                and is painted over, white               to mint. I touchthe wall, these porous lives, this dense    understory. Today: I cut                a telescope                  in two to see everything inside, out:new.