If I house a goldfish
then
I am the innkeeper. I place the mini diver, treasure chest, plastic plant,
decide who gets to stay, walk, walk, heavy with you, delicate and poised to
fight, and so sober—all this clarity and edge. No drift, only trudge as the
week count ticks five, ten, auspicious twelve. Purify the water, sure, but its
hue is an illusion anyway, and the risk-benefit ratio, the sonograph, the
psychic radio. Is the risk greater if I disown my worry for an hour, dissolve
it in a club soda with lime? Maybe it’s the cocktail of polluted air and
hormone, but there’s a flatness to each morning’s field patterned with silver
canopies. Can’t tell if numb feels good and that’s the point and oh: your
seismic hiccups. My memory won’t dip into what came before, just taps on the
glass to say hi. I don’t know if you’re safer inside, where I’m drugging you,
or outside, flopping, roving, inhaling ozone. Awake forever, I listen to a mom
podcast where they muse, I mean, I wouldn’t, but to each their own! and
want to die, switch to a true crime serial where the wife doesn’t come home one
day. Science says, basically, we don’t know, and I find release in a chemical
blue pool, you swimming inside me swimming inside a stone cavity, watched by
goddess statues who carry small planets. Words flit from my reach, suctioned
into filters before I can grab them. Getting anything down at all is a miracle.
Spaghetti for Supper
Magnolia walk, rigatoni pillars,
million dollar plus club. A million flying ants, dollars flying from a stack.
Letters clap through the slot and words scatter. We vigil at the pond,
dismember our fortunes, watch for the red flash. Telephone pole with a rosebud
mouth, I think you’re going to talk, I know you will, and talking is obviously
haunted. Hearts peel from grain elevators, panting. Dandelions flame around the
rooming house, where every day a long-haired woman asks: how old? In our
garbage back lot we hang garbage from a tree, hoping for birds, and it’s time
to boil water for spaghetti. Money is no more than petals yet here is our
unperforated roof, deflecting the rain. I think I spot a notice tacked to the
door but it’s just a square of light.
Photo credit: Alvero Wiggins