Disney Ghazal
The choices are boys bobsledding Matterhorns
& baseball-capped dads in queues locking horns.
Water from Br’er Bear’s face sprays the tourists,
like blood of the bullock. A goat shaking its horns.
Star Bright Nighttime Spectacular—all fireworked
wishes, Jiminy’s reproofs fading to French horns.
Bambi kneels in a pit of smaller Bambis, muzzled
by the plastic molding of Maleficent’s horns.
Find Guzman in a gift shop of family crests—snakes
entwining a basket. Like a medusa: hornless.
Jaywalking
Like all beasts wandering on the edges of cities, I turn my head
toward the highway. The sun sets across six lanes of idling engines.
On the fourth floor of a hospital, my father sleeps underneath a painting
of coconut palm fronds, his skin the color of petrified wood.
A car slides across the asphalt into oncoming traffic.
I cross the streets and light a cigarette by the decorative trees.
My father likes to talk about baseball. I listen to the game on headphones.
The deejay defines kalopsia as the delusion that things are more
beautiful than they are. I take the elevator to the fourth floor.
Outside my father’s window, the city lights look like dawn.