I.
I wanted the macabre plant holder
hanging in Janet and Chrissy’s apartment.
My friend said her cousin tried to kill himself
by putting his head through the patterns
of in his mother’s spiderplant hanger, but
the hook broke from the ceiling and he fell
knocking over their lava lamp, their 8-track player.
His brother almost died a week later when
he became tangled in the milfoil at Echo Lake.
I said it could have been a very
macramй summer for that family.
II.
When I looked outside for sticks to make a God’s Eye
to hang my bedroom wall, I found a mouse
flattened, its white spine stretching past its tail.
And a few feet away from that,
a dead bird with an open chest.
Its veins wrapped tightly together.
This neighborhood with its macramй details
crushed into the street. I wanted
my mother to console me, remind me
that sometimes we escape.
But when I returned to my house
it was empty, except for the macabre owl
my mother had almost finished, its body left
on the kitchen table, while she ran out to buy more beads.