DEAR MAKER—

Out the window a boy builds

his car from spare parts: unboxes

the fender in the parking lot, bends

to wipe it clean with the seam

of his shirt. Shine of his stomach

where the fabric lifts and, though

I can’t, I know beyond a shadow

of a doubt, no one has ever cut him

open. He bends again, lays back, and

disappears, this time to do some tampering

beneath the hull. And I remember him,

there where he’s gone from, like you

do a thing you loved and lost. Maker,

don’t get the wrong idea, it’s not the boy

but the bending I’m missing;

almost every body does this to me,

sometimes. At the bar last night,

I stared while a woman balanced

a baby on her hip, drank a beer

with her free hand, rocked back

 and forth on the balls of her feet.

I swear she stayed there in the air,

every place she was, all those small

distances her swaying crossed. I

watched so many bright versions of

her shoulders and her good legs

holding steady, counted them

up as they multiplied in perfect

concert with the country song. Maker,

is this what you were going for? Because

I am a bad approximation of that creature

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt,

so many men have cut me open,

made me, and made me again. My body

has so many doors; they multiply;

they’ve never opened up to let me move like that.

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