Under a needle or a knife, I think of the sun growing colder

 
The sun was a yolk in the sky
until it pooled into a vat of soup,
     until it resolved as the bent
halo of a saint
from a forgotten country.
          Meanwhile, two hurricanes 
boiled the waters of the gulf 
as a doctor poised a needle
above my sternum. 
     He asked, Do you smell burning?
          I didn't tell him it was
only the small, hot tracks 
tears made in the folds
of my pluck—
         I've always wondered 
a little about what used to live
between the first letter 
of that word, and the house
             of good fortune 
it wants to be annexed to. 
Sun, moon, you old
heartbreakers: everything withers
     from the stalk or swells,
          buckling islands of cardboard 
houses. I am no pioneer,
no trailblazer. I only wanted
      our hearts to copper and grow 
wide-hipped as squash emerging from 
unlikely tents of fragile green.