Hickey - Open Air Bindery

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Table of Contents

for Chris and Sue
two shoo-ins for the sibling hall of fame

Les paysages de nuit ont
envahi les jours.

Louise Bourgeois, The Insomnia Drawings

Open Voyage

For as long as this painting has hung here,
the figure living within its framed wooden borders has pushed
herself

down the Nile, her vessel
gliding above the bookshelf, past the vase of scissors and pens,

towards the walls great expanse, that still
gyprock sea

leading to nowhere
but the corner of the room where the latex continues
throughout the house,

intersecting at comfortable angles.
Just once,

I would like her small boat to crest the wooden waterfall
of the paintings frame

and circle around me, a red shadow
staining the eggshell white, a ripple of blue appearing beneath
her cedar hull

as she parts new waters;
for her to push around the doorways frame, to dodge the light
switch

while a wallflower moon, hiding
too long now in the cellar, rises over a horizon of dusty

radiators. Or one morning,
settling myself in for another days shift, to look up from the
desk

and find shes gone: receding in the distance,
a nautical brush mark

miles away, her small ship gliding into the paintings
canvas, into its beginnings

where she stands, faintly
stenciled, waiting for the river to be

drawn in her hand, the waters generous gift that will
lift her into perspective,

the final blackened brush stroke that will
ferry her into the night.

Hinterland Whos Who

X-Ray

So this is where Ive hidden
my ghost, shadow of all

my firsts, essential self
shuttered down to its most

basic pajamas:
Ive been looking for you,

ornithological bouquet
blooming in the dark

room of my days,
Ive been walking around

in negative,
Ive been wondering

how I fit, moony
white, in the wetsuit of my body

so its good
to greet you at last,

and to see
theres nothing wrong

with me, nothing
broken, nothing missing

but the wings
of a book

in my hand, nothing
but a little

lamplight
left on inside me.

The Garden Shed

Could I live in this
thing? Good shack, sturdy

shed, reliable
Home Hardware

special, Ill make
a place where the mower

might have been,
one square window

to steam with a kettle
atop a potbelly

stove, beans
and stew when I see

someone coming,
plaid and bad patch

of beard when I dont:
Im there already,

stupidly proud of my
misery, pulling

cans from an overstocked
pantry, the black flies

threatening me
while I rant against

the covenants
of my old suburban

zonenot
here, not as I set up

on a bluff
near a beach,

eccentric cough
of the cliff, believing

theres a bead
of wind to climb back

with, one knotted
rope that knows

its way down to the water,
and a claystone

rosary still
waiting below.

Hinterland Whos Who

Distant cousin to the broom
closet coaster, the mailbox
mifter, and the winnebago wisp,

the chimney swift is a small, sooty bird
that clings to the bricks of chimneys,
which is why

they call it the chimney
swift, not the telephone wire
warbler or the tall

tree startler; and hardly
ever do they call it
the-little-swat-that-flies-off-with-my-sleep,

the-small-slip-of-somnolence
lining-my-chimney, the-ball-of-feathers
for-whom-Ill-cap-the-chimney-

altogether, thereby
evicting the swift without sixty days
notice. Little crematory bird

that breeds in North
America and winters in Peru,
little late shift of wind

whose habitat is already smoke,
I dont care where you go
with my sleep,

just stay there
a good while longer;
and be a smart witness

to whats left of the chimneys
warmth; stay hidden,
and stay ashen,

and Ill meet you there,
however it may
happen, someday on the soft side of masonry.

Aubade

This morning I saw the front
lawn for the first time, I
saw the grass and the garden,

I saw the street and the houses
slowly gain momentum
as they ran down it,

all the magnificent cars
of the century were headed
somewhere, they were

celebrating and they
didnt even know it: they rolled
past, invisible flags waving

from antennas while the wind
confettied the street, and
the front lawn sunned

its brush cut, and the paper
arrived in its plastic.
And even the skys headlines

seemed happy to see me,
breathless with news
of their little blue world.

Suburbia the Beautiful

Theres nothing I
dont know about marigolds.

Thats why
I can tell you

the tallest is nodding to the second
in-command

in a small
battalion of summer.

Thats why
theyre paused and sympathetic

next to the patio lattice.
Thats why

you should really
fix your patio lattice.

The stop sign
reddens the street.

The raccoon
machetes the hedge.

And the paperboy
you forgot to pay

last week skirts
the sidewalks edge,

fielding a fly ball
deeper and

deeper in the canola fields
of his mind. Only

hes never seen canola,
so thats why

the fly ball never lands.
(Theres nothing

I dont know
about fly balls that never

land.) Thats why
the sun sets

the way that it does
well past the gates of evening.

Thats why
the garage doors

close the way that they do,
thats why

they wave slowly
goodnight,

thats why
the foliage, why

the drawbridge,
and why

the quiet castle.
The pavement rivers

past empty
lots. The lawn

waters itself off to sleep.
And the soft

raft of the day,
it gets lost

in the sea
of the paperboys

fading
blue denim.

The White Papers

Theres this one stack of paper
going slowly around

your glass desk, and you
nudge it lovingly

like an overweight kid on skates,
the kind whose snowsuit

bunches like a pillowcase,
who lags behind the others,

who grips chairs as though holding
tight to a forests wooden

shoulders; whose
nose runs, whose toque blankets

his forehead and drips
onto his face, and who looks up

at you, after twenty minutes
of innocent effort,

having moved just as many

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