-



But I digress,
sappy and
disappearing again into the river.
Uselessness
            tacked
    to an ear
trained to
            This is a state of emergency
running out of fuel—
in circles past the line of commemorative
applause, association getting older
and gerunds loosening
their ironic ties
their ears’ Dali’s
holding fruit baskets to the painting’s
  possible acceptance
of a lily I found
            needing me back




















-



The cloister as a midpoint tells me
the world is temporary.
I have a mind like a steel trap
jammed on fog

            Open, I don’t see
anything detaching,
just the day harshly inviting in           a substitution
            for lemonade.

I would partake in my joy
would adamance vacate

                the professorship. I’m saying it all exists beyond the sphere:
logic confirms what sound suspects
was listening.



















-



In a dream some remark halves
and halves
            like the grass we pick at,
mindlessly vociferous. We conspire, asleep.

The trauma      floats
in the visual field canonically
misled—none of it was a choice,
  I was negotiating
terms of survival with the version
            that is
Torpid,
    it says, correcting me—it’s highly
educated and               self-
excusing
and all this bread is still uneaten




















-



She kept handing me microscopic cookies
where food was forbidden,
winking at the             walls
This will undo everything, I’m convinced,
of
what stakes there are in monochrome:

records of recurrence.

I saw sarcasm in one,
  active peeling in another,
my perceiving in both the shimmer
   of
wire against the vent,
the humidifier doing its
dangest
            and the pillar it leans on.
  I walk into a whole
other
room, thinking it’s a reflection
of this one and lose her,
                        half the day
        behind a curtain




















-



I feel like we had different mothers.
What else,
            —a rabbit
leans into the cave thinking this could be it,
the exit.
  A figure tasked
       to hunt
  or be hunted
  chooses freely to run through a field.
The complaint it was all push
            and no envelope
came from       everywhere in the field
surrounding its choice.
Cars pull in wet
    from where it’s already raining.