SCREAMS FROM UNDER THE HEAP

Four thousand miles a year
around the block. At three
eighteen we roast marshmallows.
pick up friends who need rides.
Holding together in sand piles
of children and dull friends,
suburban mother strangled to death
by broken shoestrings and smothered
under mounds of holy tennis shoes.
Buy everything.
Nothing comes without its price
and inflation drives up
the cost of even shoestrings.
That sphere where you tighten
eyelets is my head, pared
like an orange, peeled and
sectioned.
Pared, peeled and sectioned,
fallen through stacks of dirty
laundry, picking up pieces,
always missing some part,
the sky fallen down to
the dirt and grass growing
out of the buildings.

6/5/76