Sleep Positions

This is how we sleep:

On our backs, with pillows covering our chests, heavy as dirt

On our sides, like wistful spoons

Clenched, knees in-tucked, arms folded

Wide, like sprawling-rooted lotuses

In Iowa on top of pictures of Hawaii, huge white flowers on blue

In New York on black satin

In China on straw.

This is how our dreams arrive:

As hot yellow taxicabs;

As sudden blazing steam, we who have been pots on a stove,

looking only at our own lids;

As uninvited insects, all at once on our tongues.

O hairdresser, auditor, hardknuckled puller of crabtraps, you who

think poetry was school, you who believe you never had

a flying thought,

lie down.