​                Hymns of water-wheels and smokestacks

          phosphor feathers
                in the chronology of revelation
                      a kind of malignant transcendence

          what are you
              looking for?

Communion wine flows
                   as piss in a diaper
         each drop caught in sacral cotton
         
         what are you
                   looking for?

        you say that the line gives rise to eidos
that

                               there’s no apex in ascending
                                          to the depths of the dead, but
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                                                    you still harbor green-plank
                                                    schooners set for shore,

      what do you hope to find
                  amidst these chimeral meat sacks?
     What do you find to hope
                 in disincarnation?

                          Just a flash of brilliance
                 and buffet set for reaping:

                         It’ll eat you up,
                                     it’ll eat you up,
                         it’ll eat you up,

​                                     it’ll eat you
                                                 whole.

that’s what they told me when i asked
if they’d take me to arizona. the loose bone
in my foot, accident prone, memory of a goldfish
a liability— the xrays were inconclusive
but the rattled rib was proof enough.
why fight for something
so average?
                              what do you consider your strengths?
nothing you could pay me for, but i am well versed in falling.
i can paint myself a pretty picture putting my carcass
on a canvas, or frag myself onto ceramic plugs the way one
performs surgery on a coral; i can be left right center
and never be able to tell you the difference.
                it took me five years to learn my name.
                i consider that a talent.
i misplaced my head a few times and used my weak wrists instead.
they call that ingenuity, right?
                    we would never fight against you,
                         we just wouldn’t fight for you.
i watch as your plane takes off, phoenix-bound and steel.
isn’t that the same thing, though?

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my parents want me to go to therapy.
they want me to ruin a day a week
by spending a few hours in a quiver,
talking to some lady about
chemicals, horses, fish, the string theory
of the fear that i will never be loved.
they said they would pay for it.
they said they would stop helping me with rent if i didn’t go.
“we’d prefer not to, but if that’s
what it takes…” if that’s what it takes
then what does it give?
the nauseating smell of a rotten wrist?
or is it just the endless searching for the end
of a circle.

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