where truth lies (1)

The Boast

At the dinner table, before the baked eggplant, you tell the story of your friend, Ira, how he kept a three-foot piranha in his basement. "It was this long," you say, extending your arms, "And it was striped, with silver scales and blue shadows." The man with purple eyes lifts his eyebrows; you laugh at his joke about the lady in the sausage suit, your toes find his under the table, and he is yours. Evening expires in a yawn of stars. But on the walk home, when he pulls you into the hedges, and the black tongues of leaves flutter, and those boogey-man eyes glitter, there won't be time for coming back with lies, with lies.


Geometry

I prove a theorem and the house expands:
the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling,
the ceiling floats away with a sigh.

As the walls clear themselves of everything
but transparency, the scent of carnations
leaves with them. I am out in the open

and above the windows have hinged into butterflies,
sunlight glinting where they've intersected.
They are going to some point true and unproven.

Rita Dove