The slumber of chargers awakens

in the toy store of her mouth's

nightmare music. For the circus

of little charred engines alive

in your pocket, you take wooden

chunks of sky offered in words

newly uncoupled from the melting 

of her peppermint tongue. 

How rare the blue horses 

she's kept in jars. Carousel full 

of candied clowns collapsed 

lavender-pink on the turning floor,

paisley painted lollipops a dress- 

rehearsal for her departure 

circling again in this funhouse 

of bolted-down marionettes–  

a world of blurred swans floating 

on frozen water. Ribbons lace

her hair's white highway 

as it threads its way

inward, rewiring her child self

for the steam-calliope's 

rage of notes. Centrifugal spin

frees the unplugged wood– 

rings of horses fixed, galloping.

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Bobby Parrott is radioactive, but for how long? This queer poet's epiphany concerns the intentions of trees, and now his poems enliven dreamy portals such as Tilted House, The Sprawl, Rabid Oak, Diphthong, Neologism, and elsewhere. He lives in the unceded ancestral homelands of the Cheyenne, Arapahoe and Ute peoples known as Colorado with his partner Lucien, their top house plant Zebrina, and his hyper-quantum robotic assistant Nordstrom.