the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.

Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows?
Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.

There is so little left of the tomato plants.

You said it was okay to blame
what goes wrong on the planet

In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote

my father holds
his favorite drink

I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster

I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt

Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat