booster pack at toys r us, 2007 - boaz kaffman

I woke up this morning to watch a video of a man opening 

alligator eggs and complaining about not getting any 

rare swamp puppies. Collect things now and then save them, echoing

Holofoil deer slipping through the shafts of the forest.

Brief sleeps lined with paper, embroidered with lace.

We keep buying the mysteries, indulging in what is behind

That gun barrel, the chamber, warped sanctums, a tower

Slipping against the pre-sky. I keep waking up drunk

With chicken bones on my floor. Every day can be completely new

If you take it like it’s already passed. Then listen to me

And really understand that I don’t know what I am saying

About what’s behind closed doors, puddles, and poems 

built, decrypted, from blinking eyelids around fountains

Of rambling cats, washing machines stuffed

With tiger pelts and untied shoes. Whose defunct heart beats

Just to touch my skin? That’s all I want. Blend with me

Like animals can’t appear from fog. My lover is sick

And old, an amputated future in a convalescent home,

Recovering while the sun reams through the blinds

And the faint camouflage of music can be heard 

Through open windows. She wears white

And the bed is white too. We will sit on the third floor,

Looking out at the backyard garden. When I walk

Up the stairs, the door will be closed and I will turn the knob

And see her, lying there, smiling at me, ravaged 

By any visage. She will tell me she missed me,

But that there is something good for me in the side table.

It will be an envelope that I won’t open. I will lie down

And she will touch my head. It will all be a bad dream

To have to save me. There will be trumpets and maybe a duck

Quacking in the distance. She will smell like she always did

And I will curl into a whole moon, saying nothing, saying nothing.

Boaz Kaffman grew up in New Haven, CT and was educated at Stanford University. He now lives in London and works as a secondary school librarian.