Anthony Frame

Come In, Houston, or Everything I Know I Learned from the Guitar Solo in Tori Amos’ “Doughnut Song” (Live in Frankfurt, Germany, 1998-06-23)

Lately, I've been into transformation,
the way a wing can be a dream, a stream of flight, 

the aurora borealis as a battle between
light and atmosphere, gravity and our brittle eyes 

as referees. I want to always remember all of the firsts,
the first kiss followed by the first blissful sigh, 

the first foggy morning that covered me
with its gorgeous cloudy cold, the first star that startled me 

when it seemed to briefly blink away. I plant
a row of sunflower seeds and know the word 

future. If these fifteen foot flowers are suns, and
yes they are, then I choose to be their satellite, the way 

fungi serve a forest, the mycelium making the soil more
than just a mess of nutrients. Yes, let me be 

the fungi, and, yes, one day I will be but not here,
not now, my feet having finally found the ground

—for once I won’t let this be about death. Can I
say that? So directly? I'm learning, when the string 

is plucked, the note matters more
than the instrument. Somewhere, 

in the depths of space, a star is dying and in
the drama of its death, hundreds of new stars will 

be seeded. And that’s how we were made, too,
one tiny element born from a breaking supernova 

building newer, bigger elements, again and again and
again and then, love, there was you and me. 

Yesterday, as I cleared a bed for peppers, you kissed me
on my balding crown, removed my earbuds, and said, 

Do you hear the earth breathing? Listen. I want
to always remember those sounds passing between 

my hair, always aware of the chattering squirrels, of
the sunflowers breaking their seed pods, that battle between 

dirt and shoot. I'm learning my hair is always growing.
My fingernails, dirty and dented, are always growing, 

The child next door, the birds at the bird bath, even
the soil, always growing. Have I done it yet?

Changed my metaphors from death to birth? From fear
to future? The earth and you and I are breathing 

and I'm listening. I want to remember
—no, I will always remember it all. 

Remember, you and I began as stardust. Whatever
we turn into, let us live up to that brilliance.

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Anthony Frame is an exterminator from Toledo, Ohio, where he lives with his wife. He is the author of A Generation of Insomniacs and of three chapbooks, most recently Where Wind Meets Wing (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018). He is also the editor/publisher of Glass Poetry Press, which publishes the Glass Chapbook Series and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Third Coast, Muzzle Magazine, The Shallow Ends, Harpur Palate and Verse Daily, among others, and in the anthologies Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books (Minor Arcana Press, 2014), Come As You Are: An Anthology of 90s Pop Culture (Anomalous Press, 2018) and Not That Bad: Dispatches form the Rape Culture (HarperCollins, 2018). He has twice been awarded Individual Excellence Grants from the Ohio Arts Council.