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.
You hack at your ancient red hills
like those creatures who eat parts of their own bodies
digging for the gold of overpopulation, pollution, and upward mobility
for 60 escudos a day
to deliver the Northerner’s rich dream
and at sunset sit in the old plaza deafened by swallows
and return to the crumbling tile-roofed box of earth beyond the hill
and at dawn once again set the long white caterpillar of villas
creeping toward you to devour you.
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.
This is to let you know I’m newly funemployed.
I’ve grown weary of the restless noise
of earth, so I plan to gadabout the universe
in search of alternatives to humanoids.
Perhaps I’ll terraform an asteroid
and confirm the latest scientific claims
it contains quintillions in gold.
I’ll appoint myself its CEO
and send you a prospectus once
I’ve penciled out investment strategies.
She stood in the front
Of the silver and black glass counter.
Her fingers ransacked the perfume,
Stone skin reflecting in the onslaught
Of mirrored ads and a solo saleswoman –
Ms. Fake Green Eyes was fond
Of a particular smell called Trauma or Mercy,
Some obscure name meant
To bore temptation like eggs from an roc’s nest.
Fake Eyes presses down on the black and gold
Spray top, a mist pours down onto my wife’s wrist,
The aftershock of a coastal storm – two presumed lost.
Station after station
of unmanned ticket booths
MetroCard swipes unlock another world.
The performers, dancers, musicians,
the bootleg dvd peddlers,
the evangelical pamphleteers who are dedicated
to convert all the New York heathens as they rush
home from their soul-suffocating jobs.
Lean against the door
balance
read Howl for the third time this week.
In science class we learned
the hottest point of steam
is at the tip of the teapot spout—
where streams of swelling heat
rupture the cooler air.
After school, I do my homework
upstairs in my room.
My kid sister murmurs
somewhere,
playing family on her own.
When the clock clicks four
the stacks of the factory moan,
and the sky
gets smudged with smoke.
She used to touch the beard on my face,
Whether nascent or full,
And stroke it with two fingers.
She would indulge in the bristles
As they bit tenderly into her chin
When we kissed and kissed
The way we used to
Kiss and kiss.
She loved when it was mostly brown and a little blonde and ginger
And loved it more when the white began to overtake the brown and blonde
And touch of ginger.
If I shaved because it’s not our world but theirs
And I must get along sometimes
She would be sad but understanding of that.
After a night of therapeutic bottle and blunt passing
He wakes on earth at 5AM
In a lumpy bed
He goes to the airport in his overalls
Brandishing a handkerchief
He scrubs the thick plastic windows
With long handles bruises
He watches the jets take off
They move hot through the endless sky
With purpose
I would rather put a chainsaw to my legs Tips of branches turn yellow;needles float down as from heaven.My heaven is a redwood forest. I clear duff from the roof with a leaf blower,from the deck with a snow shovel,mounds upon mounds rumpling earthlike rough blankets and then always comes rain,a season of rot. Seems […]
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