i need 8 bags
for the energy bar i just made, i reach in
to their sleeve
and pull out exactly 8 bags. this makes
me feel magic
and destined. is this the mania that i am
said to have?
the ocean swell that starts in my chest and rises
in lunar ripening
up into my throat? it breaks on the gravel
of silent vocal chords,
i choke back the saline dream of it,
my body seething
in the retreating tide. i need 8 bags
and i goddamn
grab them, no problem. i need an editor,
for these words, yes,
and for the form that fills my mirror. the running
shoes still sit
—sit still!—in the entry way of this winter
berry home. they
can serve as editor, my body shrinking
to the gorilla slap
dance of my feet. and that woman of a few months
back, she edited
me right on up out of her life. the words
that once found
a landing on her runways, well she ran
away, and now
they are left, these words, to fall.
homeless and exhausted
in their failing search. it is Fall so it is appropriate
to fail. Summer
makes me nervous and irritable, perhaps
as my failing is
incongruous to that season of self-assured
shine. i am sure
of my self in the way an eyeless slug remembers
its way through
tailings of slime; this likely could use
an editing, have i
lost my way? let me ask it another
way, has there ever
been a way to lose? my teeth fill
my mouth like
the tombstones of old New England
cemetery i once visited
with regular irregularity. i had a picnic with
a married woman
in one of these cemeteries, we put our tongues into
each other’s mouths
and felt with such common human banality
ourselves quietly dying.
yeah, this is all likely mania; next,
the depression
of that grave, the way i sunk
into her body.
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