Make the call. Call on your body
all wild-wire. Dead fragile
trees extend throughout us. We are
more tender robots than the last
batch. They say it’s getting bigger.
You feel less. Should you
like to be sliced or chopped?
They don’t ask, get clippers, start
at the soft. Go until the you that’s left
is just a bird, one left behind. Your eggs
just zapped life lines. You’ll never have
a baby now. Trick fireworks pop like gun’s
blowing downstairs. Baby skull
sized pine cones are all stomp smashed.
Fun, fun, fun. Ha, ha, ha. Cures burn.
You hear the doctor jingle his keys.
He leaves one inside for good
to fix your need for music. Any kind.
Amanda Chiado is an MFA graduate of California College of the Arts. Her work is forthcoming or appears in Witness, Sweet, Forklift, Ohio, Best New Poets, Fence, Cranky, Eleven Eleven and others. She currently works as a preschool teacher and California Poet in the Schools.
© 2012, Amanda Chiado
Halfway Down the Stairs 