SWAMP YURT THE SWIMSUIT EDITION
for Daniel Bailey
Here in the overcoat of my heart you're a burrowed parakeet.
My anxiety's the phantom gut lump kind. Sometimes you turn
hands and hands in a kind of sign language just outside the
frame, and this is the style of exchange I'd most like to learn.
How much curry versus coconut milk? Is everybody made of
history and aesthetics? What's the practical amount of
guilt to carry if you love the way a stranger touches her
lips at an oh-shit recall? Why is my arm not a lilac tree?
Are we human or are we dancer? Life is never over being
cute with me. All in a sudden I'm sure the whom of us
is pre-set: checkered skirts, gestures of private demand,
like how the boy rakes his temples to think harder
which means I'm thinking in terms of infinite level design,
like where each Non Player Character has this agenda
dreamed up by some minor programmer and advertised
on the box: The People You're Shooting Also Have
Schedules! Listen: the world arose from a system of
small boredoms. Hundreds of Gods on the payroll making
pet projects of oil spills, cliff swallows, a floating couch,
a ball of stardust said to hitchhike Arkansas backroads,
fish with whiskers and the taste of lemon. Of lemon?
Of yellow. Tell me that taste isn't deep in the code,
giggled in by some guy in charge of beta testing
photosynthesis and noticed only after the game
embarks on its viral release. Daniel, I stole that whole
idea from Douglas Adams and what you really need to
know in this endless commercial failure of an MMORPG
is that the original point of the game was the ocean
and how to make that ocean lead to different things.
Each and every person then is just an Easter Egg,
defined by gamers as a feature you cheat to find,
as a bug that you are too in love with to report.
YOU CAN KNOW THAT WAIT MEANS STAY
for Carolyn
Right away there’s thinking. Right away.
No matter how much I want my face to moon
with no contortion, leave all talk to voiceovers.
Hands take after purrs. Nicknames remind us
mostly of the fun inventing them. Every beach
fire is a kind of desperate flag. Cops pull over a
riding lawnmower, and the man won’t turn it off.
We walk the dike that crosses I-91. Headlights
pan like reasons. We’re keeping warm. Cars aren’t
fireflies, which is not even how I feel. “Funny isn’t
the same as being happy,” I tell you. Duh. Neither is
that. A family of tiny arsonists live in burned out
delivery trucks behind your neck. They are your
bad pillow. Hands wobble. It’s never been infinity
with me. Infinity is something I can fist bump.
It’s more like when I chew the top off a lightbulb,
and there’s no blob of light to hold. Carry. Get
close. Let me eat your eyelash like a mission.
If we plant it in a divot on my cheek, maybe I’ll
grow your love of coats. The lay of your wrist
when you’re tired. What plays in your head after
you gnaw my finger, look at me, teething the skin like
wrapping paper you want to save for next Christmas.
Sometimes I know that I don’t know what’s going to happen
next, but I know exactly who I’m going to be with when it
does. This feeling is called kiss me. This feeling is called hi.
But maybe you’re not thinking of anything. I’ve thought
about that. We’re on a hillside. Night grass. Grass face.
And the sky is clear enough to see exactly how you feel.