LAURIE SAURBORN YOUNG

COLLAGE OF MY BEST INTENTIONS

Might as well care, there
is nothing left to turn

over in the hands near
midnight or morning.

Green parrots are simply
puppets in the trees,

juggling coals.

Nails unveil ten tiny
ports into an ocean.

So I paint air over my eyes
salt and azure, one

more lonely metropolitan.

*

Just as time is a dolphin
swimming backward,

I am a pair of somersaulting
arms minus a body.

Culture is a construct;
copper running under

ground is an atomic

miracle. Is windbreaker
blue on my old man

walking quickly up the street.
Into the hair

of a friend who lies
asleep outside with dreams.

*

In the form of a question:

I paint red cowboy
boots on my feet.

I paint heel
prints on my hands.

I feed the cat next door
until it says my name.

Don’t hand me a cigarette—
I have stopped pretending

to hang dresses in the tree.

Little do we know how our voices
sound in another’s head, that

bouquet of shadow.

*

Run like a gazelle I will,

outward over water &
turn into breath. I will

fall in love with mortar.

Climb into a bag of peaches.
Oh, lonely metropolitan

there you are, drawing off the city’s
coverlet. Draping it across

my narrow shoulders as we drive
your car along a gentle

border of the sea.
 
 
 
 
BUT WHEN I GET TO HEAVEN I WILL HAVE SEX WITH CLOUDS

Motor of a boat outside
grumbles & whines. Mist-

born I am not yours to
remember. Our party

a foghorn rolling
until the fact of sound

disappears. Yawning
we push off our dinghies

which are now feathers
on waves. Are just gauze

woven through to softly
complicate this wind.