lottery 

pick numbers from the well
& when you slip assemble
your prayers on the way down

a bird throat decrescendo--
the skirt of an evergreen flustered
in the not-autumn wind--

my hair dresser told me that
magic happens in threes & so 
of course i won the lottery 

& ran away for fear of turning
into a scratch card-- skin peeling
into a grey waste basket--

there's so much dream to hang on 
around here when your nails can dig dimes
out of the wall paper--

in threes-- like god & witches 
& plum pits & how to eat grapes &
bells rung from the side

of the altar as he blesses 
the bread-- does your bread become
body with the sound of a bell?

do you ring in threes? the lottery
numbers smacking on our front door
& telling us to be millionaires--

selling us crisp-smelling bills-- bank tellers
with bowls of dum-dums-- counting
us stacks on the porch--

what will you do with all that money?
i might buy a lock for my bedroom door--
one heavy enough that not event 

blackbirds could pick open with
their claws & i could keep out 
all the voracious numbers--

their round bodies & figure eights--
you tell me that i should give in--
stuff my pockets-- pluck coins

off the sidewalk & swallow them
like escargot-- salty & somehow still
wriggling with cravings--

i lay at the foot of my bunk bed
& wait for dad to come pet my hair--
by now my skin is shed in the corner 

& the money has become dead leaves
for god to sweep from the sidewalk--
someone told me that waiting

is equivalent to dying--
carpe diem or whatever-- but i 
think at least for me sometimes i 

want to let the day be-- let the 
numbers count themselves-- let someone
else lottery themselves into the ocean--

i think i'd buy a house-- a house
big enough for us to get lost
in-- knowing that the other one was there

but perpetually in another hallway--
another stairwell-- lost in the boundless
body that all that luck had bore us--

let's be unlucky here-- push the 
sofa against the front door & share
the twin-sized bed--

knit skin on skin-- crochet me
i want to be wool & thread-- 
i want to be number with you--