alternate sources for the news 

all the satellite dishes
open & close like fly traps
catching radio & bad news on their tongues.
hard to swallow. shimmering word.
they gulp men sitting at desks with 
prediction about future terrible storms.
there will be one every year for next
hundred years that will threaten 
to knock the house off its stilts
or so the words say as they funnel into 
the great plants. the satellite dishes
have roots plugged deep into 
the veins of the house like single hears
protruding from all the houses.
i find broken ones in dumpsters &
on curbs & i fix them all to the wall
of my bed room. i sleep in a cage
of ears & i tell them nicely
that they must tell me all the truth
they've heard. they watched the sun
turn into a lighter with that
bit of blue fire at the neck.
they watched children in town 
pick up candy wrappers & eat them
for the faint taste of sugar.
the dishes know something larger
is coming like a piano dropped 
from a cloud or a whale washing up
on the front lawn but again
these things are just omens.
my collecting of dishes
is also an omen. everyone's life
is a series of omen if someone
provided us with the correct sacred texts.
the satellite dishes say i place
too much faith in their ability 
to remember & i feel 
the same way about myself. 
others place too much weight in my ability 
to be alive. i find a trumpet &
turn it into a satellite dish
golden & ready to catch anything.
everything comes from top down
from cloud to grass to ocean.
there's run off made of oil. there's 
a cyclone blinking rash red.
the dishes sometimes take turns
trying to scared me. they make up stories
among themselves but i can always tell
when they're lying. they tend to 
take long pauses & look at each other.
at night i teach the dishes to close
like grey flowers & they blink closed
but wake me up in the morning 
talking all at once
story after story after story
men climbing the sides of buildings 
& geese flying south again & 
children turning into fire hydrants again
& the big storm of the century
brushing its wet hair into the ocean.
i dip my fingers in the dishes
& ask them if they like it here & they say
they love to have company
to be all together as the world
prepares to end 
over & over.