Paloma

15

The clouds are made in Switzerland
churned out from the mountains to rise like thick cream
like mushroom caps with their
expanding breath

the sky is a gray-tissued lung from
the smoke seizuring out our mouths
mountains shooting like dandelions through
cracks in the tectonic plates
and unfolding

groaning their stiffened joints outward
they dimple the soil like landscape's cellulite, these
are the mineral bronchi plunging
upwards and away
towards the alveoli of atmosphere

the pockets ripped from fiddling so
radiation clatters through like polished dimes
where the O2 is trembled in to carbon
where the coughing upheaves into earthquakes

more dandelions seize at the sunlight
their wishes wasping on the wind