I’d love to get off your case, you first
Horses run free
The fate of the lilac bush
Weaned on her tang
Loving her before she was a constellation
Random stacks of books
Up the ladder
Will the goat eat
Is the mirage worth the heat and the scorpion
The wind has been pushing me around my whole life
The edge of the storm rode
just shy of my home
this time but I have not
forgotten my neighbor’s
kindness nor will I leave them
to fend for themselves. No matter
the color of their thoughts.
This is the time for mending drywall
not burning bridges or anything
else for that matter so let the floods
see what we are built from.
The manual lists the following:
38 screws, 35 mm long,
28 screws, 50 mm long,
8 screws, 15 mm long,
and 20 that are “adjustable,”
whatever that means.
If I unpack the cushions now,
they will recover from their vacuum pack,
cryogenically sealed bags
in about two hours.
I wonder what else I will unleashed
when I open those bags.
A stowaway vermin spreading death
like fleas on the backs of rats?
Unlikely, but I feel itchy.
“MADE IN CHINA” is stamped under “90lbs.”
On Amazon Prime Day,
the box encountered a
“delivery incident.”
I’m quite sure that means yesterday’s delivery guy
refused to wrangle the box off the truck.
Today’s guy, in a great fanfare
of untoward language and slamming of tailgates,
deposited the seen-better-days box
on my front stoop.
Now, all the parts spread out before me,
I wonder, what in the world was I thinking?!
Thomas Eakins, Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), 1875, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Sterile Pedestal
Bygone “an arm and a leg”
Progress doff’d heroes
They mapped the brain of a lamprey, and
I don’t know why, and I don’t know what
a lamprey is except that they survive
through extinction and exodi and the brain
looks like a person’s, in some sense, like a
jellyfish with those floating nerves, each
tendril a threat, an invitation to reach out
and touch me and see if you survive the pain.
I was conceived in worry
She was leaning
one leg
her left one
folded up
and back
against the
column.
The leg
gave the impression
she was leg up
her back
straight against the
column
and the white
dress short
like a tennis
player, her shoes
high tops
without socks
her face, white,
tells me abort
tennis
star, and the shoes
stops,
blocks
athlete, quickly
I survey
her face,
my eyes,
blink,
she is gone
quickly
I see the way
she owns the place
my heart tries
to think
I am alone
but we are
on the same flight,
I ask what luck,
fate, it would be
if we had seats
across
from one another,
my luck,
fate or wish
was answered.
she in seat 18C
and me in 18D
so I make the first
move…
