In the Pop-Up Book of My Life

My disclosing the pearly dream of us
talking with Tommy Heckwolf on the low grey
stone walls around the corner back then

opens to a silver jumbo-jet full of passengers
suddenly screaming its descent, fuselage
demolished headlong into the concrete slabs

of our back alley, reversed back to fully intact,
and how this century’s bleak puzzle-box punctures
the hapless finger of my pretend Valentine, spun
erect in this overlooked experiment. If I sip gently

from your hostile goblet, could you imagine
the challenge it’s been to grant the school
bullies their authority over the Oedipal leanings

vectored in my depleted mother? Surely you know
that when I squeeze my bike Little Wing’s handbrakes
past Monday my daylights are somehow put back

so your smooth-cut paperboard hinges can slide
open, contract their ransacked memories. Just think
of the summer days we’ve expanded, mesmerized
to the mental exhaust fan’s drone, chipped window

of shared bedroom, lattice of Venetian blinds
slicing the back alley. See the sketched selections
of me floating on those steel-spoke wheels

emerge in the pop-up book, beamish boy posed
behind his parents’ honeymoon telescope, stenciled
form, faraway scissors, accordion of paper dolls.