My dad shouted up that the
Space Lab was passing overhead in
The next few minutes

I put on my adidas and a hoodie
And stood in the snow and mud
Of the front yard trying to find the
Passing station as it traveled past
Hundreds of miles up

It was more excited than I had seen
My father in a long time
And I was glad to be out there with him

We almost missed it
But I caught it in the chalky
Luminescence of the moon
It glided past easily
And my father shouted excitedly
I stared straight up and took all the air
Into my lungs between the passing station
And my body on the ground

Until it was lost
In the sanguine of the night sky
Like my father's excitement
It passed too quickly

And we ventured back inside
To watch TV in separate rooms

I tell my kids
If they ever die in a car accident
And they weren't wearing a seatbelt
I'm gonna give their corpse
The belt, alright
Right in front of witnesses
If I have to

I can see my friends' graves;
their names engraved
into unforgiving stone.
the flowers that Sherry's mother
will insist on bordering her date of death
are gaudy, and I can hear
the album Sherry puts on
when she hangs herself,
scratching out a death rattle.

I can see the bear
that mauls Matthew to death.
I can smell the sandwiches
he leaves outside his tent,
I can hear his sleeping breath
and my stomach grumbles
in time with the grizzly's.
Already, if I listen,
I can hear the lack of thought
pervading his comatose head.
at least the bear will finish him off
in a matter of minutes, and the pain
will be so intense that it is barely
pain at all; it's there, it hurts, but then
he's dead. I shake his hand,
I say, "nice to meet you."
he has
a firm grip.

Mike, it isn't you,
it's your heart disease.
And it's not that I'm not attracted to you, Skye,
but watching your entrails pour from a stab wound mid-coitus
kinda kills the mood.
I want to burn both my eyes out, Jenny,
so that I can't sea you drowning anymore.
Karen, I don't really care about you,
or your looming and eventually lethal diagnosis of type 2 diabetes,
so you can go ahead
and put your hands on me.

Hermit ***** sleep deep
piled up and closed-keep,
‘*** Hermit ***** need friends.
but if you ain’t a Hermit Crab
don’t give a Hermit crab an ‘in’;
for if you ain’t no Hermit Crab,
Hermit ***** will be your ends.

good old Geoffrey especially,
his Hermit shell an endless well of money.
you may be taken hostage
by his Hermit eyes of blinding honey,
but close those eyes against the sun
and he won’t even see ya, sonny.

watch out for them Hermit *****,
or they’ll watch out for you instead.
if you don’t watch out for Hermit *****;
Hermit *****
watch you be dead.

just trust me on this,
i’ve, long ago, been There.
I would not be sayin’ it
if I didn’t Deeply care.

you know the information now,
do with it
what you dare.

I met him at his house,
stuck the check in my bag,
so many zeroes.
“Large price to pay,”
said his wife, arms crossed,
not liking the idea
of giving a younger woman money
to go deep inside her husband’s body.

I sunk into the old man
as though he was a post-work bath,
and the pain rose off his surface in steam-like tendrils.
I stretched and widened
to completely fill the shell of his large frame,
and after a few seconds of adjustment,
twisted a clumsy hand
to test my motor control.
I slunk out of his rocking chair,
and tripped over his legs as I tried to walk,
plummeting face down
into cat-haired carpet.

The wife
was giving me the stink eye.
“Arthur?” she asked, stupidly.
I shook my head.
Meanwhile, my body blinked awake from the couch
and was overtaken by a large smile,
Arthur’s blissful grin looking
peculiar on my lips.
The old man,
inhabiting my body,
reached out a hand to glide against
his wife’s mechanically smooth arm:
“Come here,” he requested.
She made a face, said she’d be back
when we were done, and left.

Now it was just me and him,
or him and me,
depending on how you look at it.
We laid down on his bed together:
me because i’d become suddenly exhausted,
and Arthur to take
his first real rest in a while.

No matter how I adjusted the pillow,
My wrinkled head throbbed.

We tried to play cards,
but Arthur’s hands shook in a way
I was not used to
so we had to stop.
He kept thanking me over
and over and over and over as i replied:
it’s my job,
no problem,
it’s my job, no problem,
and rubbed away the aches
in my temporary legs.

When the session was over
he bolted out the door.
I couldn’t move without hurting,
but I didn’t need to chase him:
I called him and told him
if he didn’t bring my body back
I would steal his credit card
and his wife.
“Bodies are places to visit
but you can’t vacation forever,” I said.
When he returned he wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“I’m not really a thief,” he let me know.
“Okay,”
I said, skeptical,
putting my hand on my own shoulder
and cozying back into my body,
which was a little stretched out.

I could feel him watch me leave
in excruciating jealousy.