Newton

i am not the part of the dandelion
that you blow away with a wish
and find, somehow,
stuck to your boot
when you get home

i am not the apple
that fell on newton
and came back to him
in biographies and epitaphs
and medals and eulogies

i am not the alarm clock
that you snoozed
and sirened again
five minutes
too late

i am not the shadow
that is sewn to your feet
and stuck on the wall:
even when it is not there
it is there

i am not the discarded secret
that comes back at bedtime
and whispers to you,
"i am here and i know you best
i know you real"

i am not your ruby lipstick
that all stained your champagne glass
and, removed from your mouth,
find smeared on your cheek
echoing what the night had been

if you push
gravity will have its way
and i will not return

Vesuvius

there is a fire that consumed the palace in the night and no one saw the orange and red and yellow and no one felt the heat.
everyone slept through it, the fire in the night.
only the queen felt her crown was melting from rooms away, and when she got there, the soles of her feet were raw, the meat and bone of the queen, in the fire in the night.
and she said, ‘dear me,’ as she saw her melting crown, as she saw a pool of gold, another shade of yellow, with a glimmer and a richness, in the fire in the night.
she tried to collect the pool of gold in her hands in the fire in the night, scooping a molten treasure up and trying to gather it in her nightgown. soon the gold had frozen in the crevices of her fingerprints and then she used her mouth to save the crown, this molten crown. the queen, with the crown swimming in her stomach, in the fire in the night.
long live the queen, another shade of yellow in the fire in the night. long live the queen, who was the fire in the palace in the night.