Brazilian Telephone

In the peach orchard in an old bathtub

the children are standing someone

in a bath of salt water, and one

gently attaches electrodes

to the nipples of the one

in the bath. Out of the weeds runs one

with a rescued battery from the old

motor home, which they had gotten

to rev its engine like the sad bleating

of a goat. If, later, anyone asks

how they learned to do this, in a striped shirt one

will say, Oh, I was looking for science

I have been baking all day,

and in a few minutes will start to wonder

what happened to that box of coarse kosher salt

I got just last week.

The children are all singing

some ditty from a musical

we saw at the community theater

a few days ago, and, in the tub the one

with electrodes affixed so gently

to his chest is calling

out little mews of uncertainty,

is calling and calling into the sundown

past the knotted trees with their hairy

fruits, green and hard. Hush,

hush, don’t worry, another one

is saying, fingernail following a line of text

in a complicated book. I think this one

is called the Brazilian Telephone, one

says, connecting finally,

after all this build-up, the ends of two

wires to the battery terminals

which, with steel wool stolen from the kitchen,

they had cleaned so carefully

earlier in the day.