i know they’re concrete bumper slugs because the slime leads right to them. the trails are obvious every morning and then the sun ingurgitates them leaving a glittery residue.

it is an aberrant cursive, some curse for their brethren snails to decipher.

the customers don’t believe me. they doubt that and they doubt the fees i’m told to tuck under their paper packet and they doubt the slugs are solving math proofs and they doubt interest is a thing of the heart. but it is and don’t tell my concrete parking lot bumper slugs otherwise.

curses are foldable, or the best ones are, and that is why i become the passive utterances of a wise woman when she calls me to question. i will fold so quickly don’t test me.

with a grain of salt, the glitter stain takes a chalky quality. pique my glasses, tap on my clipboard, make slow circles around the concrete fringes to consult with the grass.

it seems like the slugs are solving the complexity of theorem proving procedures. if we call the Federal Math Department (FMD) then they better know what these slugs are on about.

i would love to liberate them from this parking lot. i would love for them to sit by rivers and make bumper slug babies. lovers pushing strollers would beckon to them and say, “that’s who solved the complexity of theorem proving procedures.”

even the reader is starting to doubt me. starting to doubt the fees i’ve tucked in here. maybe even doubting the intellect of these bumper slugs.

please.

they just need more time. their snail brothers just don’t get it. i have it all right here, just wait until the FMD gets here. just wait until the sun spits it all back to us. don’t doubt it.

a line of claymores hang from the fuselage. the trees wince from the feint. even though they know the cut of wind in winter. it’s a game to get by with a parachute.

i try to use upcycled versions with the holes properly patched.

i bring a little bell pepper with me and whisper into its fuzzy bottom that we’re going to be ok. we’ve gone at least a week without fajitas.

nylon comes from meshes and bristles, from quilts and frayed edges. i heard in the vault of DuPont they have the only nylon doll. she is the bravest of all trees.

my stomach gurgles and dissociates and slips into an anomalous extradimensional space and lurches from liminal backflips. it must be Tuesday. or some other onerous occasion like the first mycorrhizal shiver.

what if canaries made gay love in coal mines? what if they sang with the intimacy of warning? what if we feared their silence before it came?

dicyclomine has a mean plasma elimination half life of 1.8 hours. its wrapper however, part plastic, part foil, part waste, part breached, part fingernail slice, part flattened, part incinerated, part carbonized, part smoke, part dust, part forever, part brain-burn, part palinopsia.

the aircraft avoids chemical manufacturers and places of dangerous business because a falling claymore could spell disaster.

fasten my goggles one more time, kiss my bell pepper, start the slow journey home and apologize to all the trees on my way down.

tree burls and fish tumors, both knotted buds, both of growth gone sickly, both enclosed history. ever open a book with a knife? has it ever been cake with a message on it?

one time the sun (the ticklish version) set over the river and it rose underwater. it only happened once, so it’s a well kept secret told in filter-feeder folktales.

i hear their gurgling sometimes, it follows me like a scared balloon and knocks brittle craft supplies off the shelf. it once set off a carbon monoxide alarm. the gurgling can even steal my nose hairs if it gets close enough.

it’s not even fusiform. it’s more vermiform if anything…

which of my sounds haunts my mother? i know that memories line my lips like casted hooks. they clink in my storytelling. Chubbles plays with them when i whisper close to his face. we are bonded because i smell like off-brand tuna and lab fish.

i’m not alone, nor lonely, just in a lonely story. the same isn’t true for the others.

resting my coat on the burls, the river rejects the distant light. bespectacled seams of twined liters, stitching a glass pupil and pulsing cataracts. in the winter, a river spoils blindness and starves visibility.

after an oil spill mowed the lawn
for eleven an hour,
tiny migrants crowded the greenhouse gate.
the bug ****** moonwater muddied
the steps of the tenderhearted
community (of seed undertakers),
and made its way by means of caked rubber
into the cytophotocycle,
where the moonwater volatilized.
liquid volery.
vivid luck.
awoken like post-dream nap perspirants -
oneiroceiving precipitate;
the greenhouse grew murals in condensation,
the accidents si quieros.
a misty opacity attrited
like deskinning a spider,
with a definitude of exo scaling tons;
memories shed,
shies misled.

        ⌂ the greenhouse stands where a glacier once
        slipped, clumsy as steadfast could be.
        foreign fruit fits inside it.
        it knows not what it grows.

        🌢 the moonwater was salt-lipped for a while.
        where it passed through, it was soiled.



you’d be surprised how many things hit glass.
the moonwater didn’t realize what volume
seizes space
until it heard its kind on the outside. from the inside.
Venus has a reassuring kiss when a drone is dampened.
there were three rows for puddling;
one for naps,
one for not naps,
and one for knotted gnats laying hot eggs
in lustrated bloom.
flume frustrated.
somewhere far up the chain, a worn-out manager
ordered inventory off-brand,
and enchanted a horticultural hobbyist.
the devil is ennui and god is curiosity.

        ⌂ there could be a greenhouse next door, but
        it would be an accident, a leaky shed
        with errant sprouts.
        as it would seem to my lustrous heart.
        lagging and callous.

       🌢 the moon was uninterrupted that night.
        mighty sky drifters never passed between them.
        like a parent with patience or a friend with faith.
        like a husk that stole your pose.



the maceration was mutual with leaky infusions
of purpose and imagination
materializing into groundskeepers
that tamed the pressure of an ever encroaching periphery.
one time the moonwater nearly fumed its way dry
after a political candidate entered the greenhouse
with scissors promising bonsai.
but pesticides pass by.
and pictures of fabric mean less than bird song
or beetle guides.
for the frame never mattered to the moonwater.
no more than a furnace in winter,
than a flower in summer.

        ⌂ when it comes time for the greenhouse to deracinate,
        to throw her vines like limbs over garden walls
        and access roads, eye to eye with cumulus
        monoliths; her moonwater sweat will slip
        through the glass glue and slide down to
        her fingers . . . to feel what she feels

        🌢 i love pooling here
        🌢 i love steaming and raining here
        🌢 i will love being the halo in your refraction

i eat my grin and my stomach still growls, it’s hungry for love. i chew off my finger nails and swallow them to pick my teeth. i say ‘say ahhhhh’ in tongues.

i tell the cops i’d stop dragging my drugged feet if they’d let my hands drag through the mud too. a sort of camaraderie.

i take the wasp spray and target my shirt and huff hard enough. afterwards, i don’t feel a buzz.

they ask me why i haven’t been taking my meds. i tell them i take after i give, and laughter is usually what i offer them, which they take as an insult.

when the doctor comes to visit, all i hear is “it’s knife to see you.” and my stomach wants out. surgery is not the part where they take something away, but rather when they put the emptiness of living back.

remember all the games we played? you all were so ahead of the shame even though none of us could help ourselves.

if i could beg a favor, i would beg on my needs, without fear or forgiveness, to call it a night. but it has to be the last.

there’s a farm that hosts swing dancing lessons in the ballroom. we all watched the guests from the bushes and i felt my moods winning first place.

i drilled a peephole into my wall and wait at night for an eye to fill it, just to feel a change of seen.

i fill up the glass until i taste the rose tint. it’s thorny but i’m guaranteed to make my bed in the morning. my one regret in life is that i have known someone else’s primrose path.

knifely put. give me the nice back and i can prove all the questions you've been dying to ask.

there’s a forest known with a wicker scent
woven tree line where we caught the snake
pull a full bottle from behind your back
rinse a clean slate and lay it on the track
                                                                             coal come stain
                                                                             nickel abstain
THERE AINT DAGGERS AT HOME WHEN iT
MEANS THE SAME
when i lean in vain

build a portal out of garden vines
taken on the precipice of hardened signs
stretched out over our memory seams (seems at rest now)
full bent spine over backlit needs (needs to rest now)
CUZ YOU KNOW i AINT LIVING
i’LL BE WONDERING HOW
   entering bow
it leaves
a
  compass stage

you take me back into those dimed up days
long at lasst quartered in century delays
give it two best like the nightlight’s dead
lead me to the outlet where i lose my head
dollars and cents
it kinda makes sense

LABOR FOR THAT FEAT WHICH ENDURETH UNTO
    everlasting
    it leaves
a      compass     stage