after Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland

1. 
There’s a house between ramshackle and pristine
in the middle of some unknown wood.  Inside are artifacts
I don’t recognize.  When I turn around, I see a unicorn
limned with a sparkling halo.
2. 
What if the furry boughs of that ornamental tree
were the legs of a dormant tarantula, and it woke to juxtapose
the golden sun against the silver moon?
3.
I traded all my oxidized pennies for a star to store in a jar.
Sometimes, it glows so brightly I almost can’t sleep. 
I wonder where it wants to go.
4.
“Sorry!” I say to my bed’s square frame after bumping into the sharp corner that will surely leave a bruise.
“Quite alright, madame,” it replies.  “‘Twas no trouble at all, you didn’t even scrape the finish.”

5.
The roses are so pink they’re red, inviting me to pluck
one, never mind the thorns.  If I roll up the flower, mash
the petals in my fist, and throw
it up as high as I could, the sky would turn magenta.
I could throw out my Barbie pink sunglasses.
6.
Did you know a fossilized saber’s tooth will rip
time?  I step through the gaping tear
to pull the wooly mammoths from the tar that would have consumed
them.   Back in the present, Big Bone Lick would just be a no-name forest, but if you went far enough north, you’d find tusk marks.