Vespers
Evening arrives
on the pinnacles
of eucalyptus
they take flight from high perches
wingspans shift
and catch currents
hungry
not hunting
scanning for carrion
Health
In An Office At The Movement Disorder Clinic …
The stubby screws
in the cerebellum
poke out, exposed
to the cold
air. I have to leave
these parts to nestle
in the temporal
lobes, untethered
It’s the best I can do
which means I can’t
put the brain
back on its base
Mutated World Sequence
My husband watches Ozark on Netflix.
I walk away to my laptop, tell him,
I don’t like any of the characters
and I don’t like the plot.
He can see how that could be true,
but he watches anyway.
The show’s been nominated.
Conventional COVID-19 wisdom says
the smart thing to do is stay home and avoid people.
We wait for a cure as hours of scripted
dramas flicker before our eyes.
Talking Heads
It’s something to look forward to,
Mom says
of the talking heads
on the evening news,
her portal to the world.
When Dad was still here,
they’d watch together, and in twenty minutes
their own heads
would drop to their chests.
Now she nods off alone
under waves of silver hair,
the ocean at dawn
Last Known Location of Snr Wil Flowers, Director of Intelligence, NWF
You always want it to make sense,
Like knucklebones, like how swallowing works.
Simple eye of mechanics developed
Over millions of years of failure. Humans
Are the success of their failure time and time again.
That’s whats truly alien. Truly unnatural
As the sky opens up, the black roll of stars, planets –
Some like necks on the gallows, some like an arena stage.
The maw is the medicine with death as a common side effect.
Then, nothing makes sense. Its a fugue state, lips dripping
Words over delayed relays. Mission specialists
Still sitting in Ohio struck mud like American-made pigs,
while you snort down wildlife powder and hope the TOG adaptions
They gave you don’t go liquid in your stomach. Survival
Rates of surgery in orbit aren’t what they used to be.
You, your own scalpel and organ donor, doctor, and lawyer.
Fat Trek
I stumble over oak roots
on my fat trek down to the lake,
ignore jingling ice cream vendors,
Dunkin’ Donuts shops, Krispy
Kreme allure.
Rorschach patterns on my back,
I stop for water at a tactile
stone bubbler, not distracted
by the lemonade fountains,
root beer floats or sugared
hyacinth teas and I avoid
I-HOP for lunch.
A nurse clicks my arm to the line
in the middle of the
Magicians
first season a group of
college kids
portal through Brooklyn––
Have you considered spiritual healing?
my eyebrows crunch together
Like ayahuasca?
He nods
shrugs over
his shoulder
no one’s listening
Sometimes the disease
is a spiritual problem
Milkshake
“Another milkshake please.”
The waitress eyes her with disbelief. Catalogues her stained-through hoodie and greasy hair. Not that the waitress has room to judge with her own issues: a slight hunchback and blisters covered by her platform flats that she most certainly did not purchase in the 90’s and definitely do not smell with age.
“Another one, girly? Don’t you want some food?”
Read more "Milkshake"Standing Still for Survival
Long long before long ago, Earth
Was originally set within a koru
Unfurling at every antlike moment
Directly towards the sun, until
Now it is too overloaded
With evil spirits & viruses
To continue revolution as it
Tries to return to itself
Satisfied To Be Us
To be anywhere in the world
in any weather, to hold a book
like a child does and [moving] moves
from here to the flanks of the Vosges,
stares at a fresco by Piero
or hears an aria float out from a window
on the Coronation Route in Prague.
How fine it is to be us, to be
on the water, our thoughts as slippery,
as fluid, our moods like gusts [of dopamine]
little zephyrs of enticement,
our happiness rising and setting
with the sun, the bright seal of hope
the dimming lamp of rest.
Visitant 