I don’t want to be on the deck of my pool
in this purple-patterned winter robe,
just to glare over the neatly trimmed hedge
at my neighbor’s new chicken coop.

I want to slip back into that sunny dream
with the blonde from the bookstore
who bumped into me in the checkout line.
She was tugging on the warp of a sailboat.

But here I am, watching the white chickens
scramble like clouds from their blue coup
while the day slumps foggy on the horizon –
that is, if all clouds could do is squawk and shit.

I like to imagine my own red lawn cart
full of springs, strings, rocks, and slings,
set up where the Jacaranda branches bisect
into a slingshot as dependable as rain.

I’d aim right for their clucking heads
and watch their feathers burst like eggshells.

Later, I’d tell the blonde from the store
about how my neighbor’s wife yelled at him
for leaving the chickens out in December,
how the storm left them fucking filthy.