On Penguins in Brooklyn

the protagonist feels like
she’s never leaving,
stuck on a moving walkway
in the middle of cincinnati
international airport
in kentucky,
headphones dangling,
she

Equivalence

How heartbreaking to find irises tilting
to full bloom in one direction
as if waiting for someone to come
down their path are one symptom
of light’s partiality. A heart

montreal

baked brick, dark bread,
breath sinking into a hot, grey bath when
caught in smoke between compartments
on the metro. pink lights from
the townhouse on rue de rushbrooke
blinking away

September Dream

An eternity, for the Asphodel, is a brief few
months. It’s been a decade, as the crow flies,

ten days on Venus, ten Venus days,
each, longer than a year.

When I’m without

I WANT TO THANK YOU

for unbottling my aged Mandarin with each 晚安 / for cooking me these sardines / strewn on a
beach of rice, their eyes still intact / I want to thank you / for carrying that

I’ll Always Make Love to the Mississippi.

We bruised
my knees on the bluff.

I’ve disappeared into the current
of loving nothing
but tainted water lapping against rotten fish
against a rocky

Stuffed cracks in ground with paper towels

I used to chew on blocks of wood
crying that the dentist has gone away from town.
*
My mouth would open wide
for sparkling birds and insects to enter

“Timothée Chalamet and Lily-Rose Depp Make Out, Eat Fried Chicken”

They are busy galocher-ing on 2nd Avenue
I am on the sidewalk looking at the sky

They are stopping to wipe their mouths
it

i'm in love with the thousand yard stare
deeply towards the worn fold
of the catcher's glove

I pause from scraping frost
off the car, and watch my gray
emissions wisp away

into the chill. I miss strict
seasons, and knowing
what to wear. Last week, it was 72.

When will summer

A Hopeful Young Man on a Job Interview

I’m broke and eating chocolate ice cream out of a novelty helmet
I’m sweating because I’m wearing a sweater in the heat
to cover up the insane poison ivy on

Just that instant
when thinking becomes
too much

Drive-in movie theater, Merrillville, Indiana, 1989

Field of Dreams on a screen bigger than every building in Merrillville,  

my brother and I eating chocolate sundaes from mini Dairy Queen

In Praise of Hands

I miss hands. I miss their flimsy, awkward quality –

the way one looks when offered while still searching

for a reason. I miss being young, lining up after the

"[ / ]" and "[ / / ]"

In the middle of
the street is everyone
you know.

Two men smoking cigarettes on Bleecker could mean anything
to each other.

All the time I don’t know what I’ve lost. 

Is this how a woman
Disappears, water-tap and soil

There is one boat out every day.
We are never packed in time to take it.

She flips a stool on the bar like a lamb
 

There’s so much advice
in the world, such as: if you’re feeling
very low, put on a suit

I made a call
and I lived. 
It was the longest
life of my life.

Do you remember the names of everyone you swallow

One of your axolotls has eaten the other
and every week you clean its twenty-litre tank
of cannibal excrement.