LITMIR.BIZ

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      of how things run

      That we were broken

      That we lingered near a broken factory

      That we had broken

      We can say that the disappointment

      of slicing into a leek

      and not finding the requisite layers

      but a thick white inedible core

      is not the disappointment

      of approaching a sleeping animal

      only to learn that it is dead

      but it does nudge one slightly

      further into despair

      We said despair

      We meant the strings of impossible

      instruments that they made

      in the factory

      That we had seen

      That were broken

      That there were different paintings

      That could be played as songs

      We had seen other things

      That we had seen

      That had come unstrung

      And blown between adjacent bridges

      Whose river had presented us a city

      That was broken

      That we had been

      That we were broken

      That was our city

      This was our city

      that was a song replaying itself in the dark

Confidence

      When a woman comes into the store,

      points at me and says to her child,

      Tell the man what you want, I turn around

      to see where the man is.

      Maybe I will visit him someday

      in the Home for the Wildly Inarticulate,

      for the Destroyed, for the Actual Man

      Standing Where I Cannot Reach Him.

      Don’t expect I’ve seen the center

      of anything, though I have been

      privy to enough insane exchanges

      to do with hygiene. Henceforth I ban you,

      letter-shaped body parts, from

      my purview: our last chat left

      the taste of buckshot in my mouth.

      It’s early again, and late, when the birds

      assume a tone neither mocking

      nor judgmental, but something about

      their exuberance is oppressive

      enough to eat holes in the roof.

      I just make the occasional collage

      that falls apart when it rains,

      wield my plaid umbrella like a sword,

      and charge, exhausted, into the storm.

In Which the Pathetic Fallacy Wants to Even More

      Frankly I don’t follow this

      strategy of yours wherein you

      tell half the people on the island

      you are a barista and the other

      half that you are a barrister

      and they buy it.

      Everyone else

      believes and I continue to serve

      as your wing-man as we snake

      among the aloe spikes.

      You keep me so busy,

      thwarting my every attempt

      to find again a favorite stretch

      of beach, when all I wanted

      was to show you the pirate bar

      with the swings.

      What else

      has prevented me: relatives, railroad

      tracks, paralysis, thickets of killed

      umbrellas, cliffs impossible to scale,

      a weeping jaguar, the fact

      that it was 5:30, squishy brakes,

      money, all my bent

      and voided sleep.

      I wish I had

      some idea but to admit I have

      any at all is to risk that it is full

      of a sad nothing.

      Huge lizards the color

      of banged-up charcoal are shredding

      one another beyond a cluster

      of palms, their hisses curling the flat

      green leaves and then disbanding

      into the waves.

      That’s a surfeit

      of strategy right there but your faith

      is still big enough to fit in a kayak

      that could be drifting in or away.

Desire Loves Disaster

      I should have spoken clearly / made known

      the consequences of not accepting an offer

      even though I offered nothing

      and there were never any consequences

      trick question / minus question

      minus trick / minus minus

      see how everyone heads for the shore

      to greet the unseen vessel

      that’s devoured half the horizon

      but they find instead the moon’s

      portrait sketched on the water

      I say this / as though you were not everyone

      as though the moon had only a stump

      of chalk

      and nothing better to sketch

      than its bleached and bloated self

      the beach is lined with lit-up skulls

      every eye a lighthouse / beaming into flotsam

      but they won’t save us

      my country runs to the edge

      and throws itself in

      when I said beach I meant cliff

Spring, or, I Don’t Know Everything Is Wrong with Me

      Modes of transport deteriorate, scattering

      into a list of insults, if a list can be said

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