Hold the Negatives Up
By Chris Bakka

Hold the negatives up
to the light and see the
story told in light’s absence.
See? Autobiography.

Our love, fake like
Styrofoam snow, packaging foam
littering the felt rug beneath the
Christmas tree.

Two shams.

I was your bird then. Little bits
of string and straw in my home-building
beak, flitting to and fro between the
field and nest.

Nothing from the cracked blue egg
leaked but yellow yolk, liquid light from the
melted sun. You drank it up.

Brother, born at summer's end,
let loose after the fall, sucked into
the vacuum of winter and stuck in
the coils of spring.

Sister, eyeless, searching beneath
the bed for a won heart, painted
silver in a second-place sheen
that now flakes in cracked patches
buried in the carpet.

A naugahyde nap, eyes crusted
over with sleep, wet with tears
from a cat’s yawn, emotionless.

Bird’s gone, flown to Florida,
turning tarot cards over in
time for the rapture.

What remains of the nest,
batted down in pieces by
a broomstick boy, scattered
to the east?

New colony, ancillary revolution
led by freak glitterbugs and boys in
green tights. Hot resort at a low
price, second star on the right
hotel, straight on till morning
swallows you and it’s a starless
night without growth or wings.

I live in a trailer with low lights,
eat chicken gone bad, throw the
entrails to the dogs that aren’t mine.
Suck the milk from the dandelion stems,
splatter a tomato on the white satin.

Bury me with it, if you remember it.
Pocket-watch long stopped, I know.
Time does that.

Chris Bakka is the recipient of a 2008 Portfolio Silver Award in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. He is also 2008 U.I.L. Ready Writing State Champion, as well as the winner of the 2007 Texas Book Festival Fiction Writing Contest. He divides his time between his home in Texas and his dorm in Illinois, where he is a creative writing major at Knox College.

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