pipe tree

there are flowers in cages at the zoo.
i ask "why?" too often. because they bite.
i bite. am i in a zoo still? i hear a bell.
there are pipe trees growing where
i wanted a tomato bush. my father is
singing in his sleep. he is sleeping
in a battery. a professor told me once
my poems sound good but are not about anything.
i wanted to tell him, "does this country
not do to you what it does to me?"
i walk outside & accept the blender. 
the beautiful beautiful & the neighbor 
who kisses his shotgun. who breaks flag code.
i was a terrible girl scout. nothing to do 
with the gender & more to do with
my inability to complete an instruction.
i call for help. the help kills my dog. the help
burns down my mailbox & says,
"you no longer quality." i stop myself
before i ask, "for what?" there must have been
some program that could have saved me once.
i break the flower out of the zoo. they eat
all the houses on my street. violence starts
to feel like "well it was a matter of time."
i am driving worse with age. the road like
a jump rope. i want friends to make me
some popcorn & feed it to me once piece 
at a time. i miss my hometown. not what it is now
but what it was when i grew up there.
my partner says, "everything changes"
which is both very true & very not true.
the cemetery spreads. a deer stands on the roof
& will not explain to me how or why she is there.
it is best not to ask questions of the divine.
instead, write them poems. i throw 
as many paper airplanes as i came, hoping
my sibling will hear me & drive to where i am.
fold them for me. point them directly
so that they land in the open mouth of the sun.