Sir breadwinner, could I peek into the golden bag
carrying all the prayers in soda bottle caps?

I’ll be a supreme producer
selling souls at human’s main income,
a sunny afternoon with spiritual ascension.

I’ll redeem main’s lips but not their soul,
can I manufacture that plastic cross with you?

A god was born on a Saturday evening
against the sky as the holy universe exploded
into fiery stars & black dust

He wore the name tag: Ultimate Being
He sat with His ear to their frosty dimension
like an alien with a superiority complex.

My family eats dinner every night
around a green island—

Mom hasn’t talked for weeks,
she likes to stare at the window
and let her cigarette cool.

I stare at the plate,
spaghetti sprinkled with sand.

Mom says grandma used to dance
naked as a child on the beach—

she’d stuff shells up her nose
and blow air till they’d hit her brother.

Mom can’t taste the grit anymore,
she soaks them in her coffee—

showers them on the counters and sofas
shakes them on all our beds.

We all wonder if the next speck of dust,
drifting out toward the quiet waves

will be grandma’s rasping laugh
whenever Mom tried to clean.

The opaque fog of midsummer night,
I only linger long enough for your sigh
and then I carry away,
maybe a moment before you can.

Where did the time go for a hundred indecisions?
Eyes, unfocused on the bleary screens
of this modern vision,

connecting the distance with the rapid movement
of mechanical, well-oiled fingers
to sculpt the exact nuance of our meaning,
but it’s all so limiting.

It’s easier to muse instead
with the warmth of this muddy coffee -
(two more teaspoons of sugar, please)
a new dance to save my sanity.

Your presence a catalyst for a reason,
to figure out,
to assort and craft,
a draft for the next silent move -
my method so stealthy,
soaking in the obscuring smog
of a fading city.

Should I disturb you?

Like a distrustful feline,
defamed by an infant’s desire,
you are compelled to defy instinct,
but you’re here.

I want to shred it all – in pulsing, hot rage
tear apart your elementary concepts
or Platonic ideas,
skewed visions of the future,
split the illusion of victory –
into shards of glass.

But I cannot connect in any other way.

I like to create toxic winds
to blow your at your scabbed kneecaps

and spit week-old spearmint gum
aiming for the shine of your work shoes.

It must be cruel to be me,
your arrogant smile hurdles over

the human sized mouse trap
a naive and sweet girl left on your driver’s seat.

Don’t worry, you tender, soft darling
of Satan’s bloodiest creation

I’ll be every cosmic speck
till someone sinks you back to earth.

20 years ago, two girls waved
to the vanishing man in his vortex

while his wife smeared blood on her lips
before the heap of compost started to tear

black bag of human garbage clinging
to his back, all of our emptying baggage

that he pushed on rusted swings,
rocked in synthetic carriages.

But his journey was diving & running
and he didn’t have space for all these poking limbs  

He’ll leave them at the airplane’s entrance  
and fold the tearing bag into his pocket

A wrinkled souvenir of the limited places
the splitting ocean would let him occupy.

I sprang up from white dust
onto the shore & my mom calls me the Lying Cat—
I tell the truth whenever I’m awake.

I walked to the place where
everything sunk beneath the boardwalk
and pumped water out of a dead tortoise’s lungs.

If I punch his chest, I wondered:
would his soul creep back into his heart?
I couldn’t care for anything at that age.

Now I drive Cadillacs into expanding skylines
and with crusted fingernails,

dig my plastic shovel to find sand dollars
but it’s all empty.

Last week, I thought:
(I see a wilderness for you and me)
but that wasn’t very original

Tomorrow I’ll curtsy on flashing meteorites
and court double winged men on Mars.