I want to clank my fist
against the armor they’re constructing
inside me.
Rattle the scaffolding
just enough to let them know
I know
there are laborers hammering away at this
shiny new space suit
they’re building inside me
I can feel them hammering with their tiny hammers.
My skin can feel them all
so I can
survive
this new terrain.
For example:
coffee shops, I’m told,
are where humans
like to sit and read.
To write short poems.
Fingers slow tonight from
extra age, blown into my hands.
The wind’s extra fierce tonight.
So I sat by the lid of the fire pit
after we switched it off
in the cold tonight,
sat in the dark tonight and watched
the fire pit lid go from
hot to not so.
I don’t want to be Mrs. Leary’s Cow tonight, I thought.
Or Mrs. Leary. I don’t want to be
the lantern the cow kicked over
or Chicago burning after Mrs. Leary
went inside to watch Trevor Noah.
So I stayed and sat and watched the lid tonight
watched while the wind
blew my fingers
back to 1871
a date I plucked from Wikipedia tonight
where I also learned
the whole Mrs. Leary story was a lie.
She was real.
She was framed.
Heartbroken.
Innocent of
everything but
being Irish.
In Generic World you go to local
Hospital, and they say: “Welcome to Hospital,”
and you can feel that capital letter, like they
extra-mean it.
You have a problem with one of
your organs, and they say:
“Organ Problem!”
And you nod your head.
“Let’s get that taken care of,”
they say with Teeth.
Doctor tries to help you. Nurse checks Vitals.
You fade out, and Organ does too.
Afterward, you lie there in your bed at night
listening to your roommate share
complaints about his pain and
the uneven road
that got him here, in this bed, beside you
talking through this curtain late at night.
There’s nothing generic happening at midnight.
At midnight everything is very clear and specific,
all the way to the tips of your fingers, the rough touch
of the bandage you press against to figure out
if you’re healing well.
If they put you back.
Around 1:30, the conversation settles down.
You drink your juice.
You close your eyes.
You roll over.
You wait for Pill.
He gave me back my hard drives today
by the pond by the geese
by the free-range 3-year-olds who
don’t even know what “pandemic” means.
By their moms who don’t trust the geese, don’t trust
the two old(er) guys at the picnic table
with matching gray streaked
beards handing
a box
between them.
Wordless very much
like the cold warriors
they are.
They are cold. We are cold.
It’s a cold day.
I want to shake the box and the hard drives
and let all the
photos and movies of my kids
as kids rain down, coat my hair
like pixel dust with their music videos and
the sound files we kept of their
toddler voices with
New York accents
my beloved
lost characters from
“Our Gang.”
We put our masks back on when people move close.
Slip them over, up over our mouths.
We talk about how we’re still
making time for creative projects.
He can’t help me with my drives.
He has to work on his script.
I can’t read his script. I need to work on my poems.
We both need to work.
We sound like two people talking about how
the stores are closing soon,
and if we want to buy that shirt
those slacks, that stylish hat
we’ll need to get it in gear and
head to the mall.
We’re out in the morning
driving down 8th street after the rain
looking for coffee in a favorite neighborhood
trying to figure out if this store or that cafe
made it through the night.
I’m expecting to see palm fronds in the street
sandy-colored mutts running at an angle
cars and cans tipped over
telling the rest of us to be quiet be quiet
while they try to
sleep it off.
A hurricane
came through town these last 13 months
there was a
hurricane in town, touching down,
and we’re out and about in the morning now
driving through the next-day sun.
The street’s wet from 13 months of
when’s it gonna end
and we’re looking around for coffee and
an old rhythm.
Looking down streets
and in windows
to see who’s still here.
Lousy words roll,
start somewhere
toward the back of his skull
Marble out in his too full mouth
toward his lips, from his lips
spinning, spill out onto the
floor.
Lousy words make him
slide fall sprain on the ice
his wrist catching
himself with his right hand,
the seat of his
pants cold, wet.
Why stand on the ice
in the first place in those
sharp, black shoes?
And those same lousy words
mark joy mark life
letting him shine through.
Letting him shine like
marbles like ice spinning, sliding
like sharp black shoes
covered in ice debris now
as he rights himself.
As he sends those words
from the back of his skull
to yours
and all
the shimmer points
in between.
Threaten me with your breeze,
Your touch this
Fragile skin I’ve got has cracks.
If you come to my door, I’ll open it slow,
Step back, pull up like for a fadeaway,
I’ll raise my voice,
Keep you at bay.
Don’t breathe into me, my friend my foe
don’t send me words.
I won’t
breathe
into you.
It’s changing things.
I’m evolving into future
me, some better biped. A cellular
remodel til I can
eat at a restaurant outside or
be in a friend’s backyard
outside and if they walk past me,
too close, it’s ok,
not too close
after all.
And I can
use their restroom.
And after that, after this:
flight. super strength.
heat vision.
I’ll be some
better biped
changed by a vaccine and
40 years in the desert
and all the things
it did
to all us.
When I come back to the office
we will all look older.
And that’s because we will all be older.
No one will return as they were. As they left. Even
if they sit in similar seats, and the fashions
haven’t changed all that much.
Meeting rooms will be booked. Restrooms taken.
Notebooks will be misplaced and there will
be coffee, I’m sure and
everyone will have
an avalanche that happened
while they were away
some ice that broke off
that fell off of them
into the canyon below.
And then suddenly, yesterday, it was Spring.
With dreams of visits to foreign lands —
to movie theaters, coffee shops,
to the insides of other people’s houses
where dining room tables turned into desks
might become dining room tables
with a few things on them
once again.
All in the seasons ahead.
Far away, down this curvy road.
But trees and fields fly by in the Spring.