August 1, 2011 Issue

In the dream, there was the green duck,

dark and small, wooden, worn,
made to fit in a child’s hands.
In a way you could do almost anything to it.
But you would never burn it—the saints were burned
alive, they were very polite about it.
Maybe I was holding the cedar duck
when I first heard the word “duck.”
In the snapshots, I looked fresh, and my brain
looked as if it sparkled inside its shell.
“Duck,” it said to itself, and the duck
came in, like a welcome guest. I have eaten
brains, my tongue loves to probe
the delicate folds, and break my way in
to where there may have been dreams of calves—
some in the long envelope,
like a matter in a spirit,
some in the harness of the force-fed.
My brain is the home of a little thinker
with fork-lightning arms, and legs, and neck,
and hair. When I wake up, she is there
at the entry to her maze of beaten
paths. I try to guide her electric
boots over to the paths least beaten,
hills of the peaceable kingdom. “Duck,”
I say, she ducks, she gives me The Duck
of Death, and the decoy next to the clay
pool my father’s father dug out and
liked to leave empty on a hot day.
There are homes where children are used as toothpicks,
sponges, razor strops, ballet
linoleum. I love you, I say to the duck,
and its green beak curves in a smile,
and it quorkles to me the secret of its young
night: You are going to have a wonderful life.