if I eat another raisin I’ll burst
as the clouds rolled in slowly
to the east of Panama City
electric blueberries bursting on the fringes
and what we took for booms
might have been house walls
crumbling around the perfectly good plumbing
it was silly to watch her eat raisins
and say things like if I eat another raisin
I think I’ll bust open and show you true human
honesty, chew them to a mash as the sun
shone through cloudslash in the sky
under which tree after tree leaned,
groaned and crashed into a spray
of feathers, hornets, and lastyear’s leafandloam
on a narrow oldcut way where we watched
the rain stop and the bees make ovals
above the heliconia–known to eat children
and ambulate when no one’s looking–
silly because my pants were wet
and I kept picturing a room where
all the thumbs were stored til needed
if I eat another raisin I think I’ll burst
and bring us the news of tornadoes
in the north and images of people going
by on the hoods of cars, waving, holding
out their shoes as proof of a weary past
and a promising future. We listened
(all kinds of things come to you outside Panama City)
and it all seemed so far away as more
thunder came, thunder from the east
thunder from the west and when it met
above us in silver collision and shattered
we leapt for safety into an old crater
where the rock from some ancient sky
protruded from the earth like a boxer’s knuckle
and we huddled there and waited and she said
if I eat another raisin I think I’ll burst
