Six Ways to Use a Spoon

First, to dig a ditch
the shape of a body
or,
shallower and closer to home,
scrape off flaky lead
paint or dead skin
blistered dry by sun. Second,
to play a trick or spoons or pull
with your teeth—bend with your mind to make
a spectacle.
You’re a spectacular jubilee.
Look,
it’s a mirror holding your face that ends
up where the light curves
where you end
and the up ends.
Comeuppance upends
in an up-
stairs away from the noise of the kids.
You barely recognize your self-
portrait in a convex curl.
Third,
to pool light in,
to sip lightly from,
to be a way toward light—
a conduit connecting cut lamp wire. Fourth,
to scoop the eye jelly of a Cyclops
from between your foot and sandal or
scratch off the sap-turned-tar of a burnt log
driven into the oculus of some Polyphemus,
which either means much
renowned or many
reputations or
a straight-A student cutting
sophomore English again
like here we go digging again—
a hole
the size of a larger body
this time.
Isn’t that the way it goes? Fifth, to steer
a mouse afloat,
a rudder or oar for a mouse-sized boat.
I’ll say hat,
and you’ll say
we’re playing again.
Sixth, I’ll say poem,
and you’ll say
we’re playing again.
I’ll say this spoon is an or.
Oar?
No, or.
I think you mean and.
I think I mean and
I’m startled that I do
at all—