Somewhere That Isn’t Here
Every time a poet catches a cold,
the stock market quivers like a tripwire.
Senators from both parties send
well-wishes in AI-generated rhyme.
Pastors appeal to their congregations,
clutching the lectern like a walker.
Foreign leaders fumble with red phones
and discuss contingency plans,
flanked by guards who can’t stop
fearing for home. Babies cry
in Morse Code, stars bend sideways.
Even atoms stop vibrating long enough
to scan their respective mediums,
wishing for words and eyes.
Cave Paintings at Starbucks
The woman in a headset hauls a trash can
full of cardboard and I start thinking about how
strange the world must have been before
somebody dreamt up the notion of time.
Maybe width and desire are opposites. Maybe
that guy with the crazy hair who says
that aliens built the pyramids simply doesn’t
know any better, having never seen
how our veins roil like burning oil wells.
The first poems were probably shopping lists.
Still, somebody thought to outline that
wild horse galloping off the lips of a cliff
without even a cartoon bubble of profanity.
And maybe I’m wrong, but I think it was a woman
who dipped her bare hands in ochre
and palmed stone where the heart should be.
Elegy for Stubbed Toes
But suppose we figured out a way
to stop stepping on cord plugs,
toys, little echoes from glass bottles,
say we never again had to drive
toe-first into the foundational spite
of bookshelves, no excuse now
to act like incensed flappers,
sprinklers for rage and blasphemy –
first the sermon, then the miracle
which turns out to be nothing
save the matter of surface area,
one instant sliding over the next.