Chewing beans and greens and sprouts
mushy plant goo
crunchy seeds and soft spiced tofu
smacking with wet satisfaction
the contents of this green box,
of which vegetables are a fraction.

It smells like burnt toast up here  
and my stomach aches as the day settles below the horizon
I watch the time drip by,
numbers sliding between its uniform coat buttons in increasing augmentations, up and up

what has been done with today?
where has the bright sky and trees’ shadows gone
will this life be spent scratching my head,
pursing lips, counting hours
wishing nausea away
for fear of lost time?

I see spiders under the stone wall bridge and I’m overcome. I drink green tea and it dries out my mouth. I wonder if she’s drunk when she says me she misses me. I like this song. I like my hands. They work for me.

Mmmm summer’s end in St. paul warm at night, cool in the day, friends drinking and chilling and everything so still yet fun and lots to look forward to, heart very full, good food, company, no plans, only plans are good ones followed by more good, smell of grass, trips to Minneapolis, comfort of familiar campus and faces, dinner party at friends, pretending to be full fledged adults, summer camp for the OLs, going to work, crocs around campus, new bracelets, intensely vulnerable text messages, quiet summer mode campus, sleeping on someone else’s sheets, cicadas chirping, the kind of ease and simplicity you didn’t know in high school and couldn’t have known, reconnecting to eduroam, Patagonia has remodeled their store front, blue and pink stripes in the night sky, oxytocin flushing my face, hedonistic bliss, first CVS trip being back, legs itchy to run,  legs itchy to wander this flat state of lakes, wondering what it is like to own an apartment and spend a year here, maybe work for the florists or an internship or at the music store, grocery list on the fridge at the eco house,  “twees,” Grateful dead live (don’t shuffle), hot wheel car you forgot about, ten books you forgot about, winter boots in a cardboard box and chucked into a nearby shelf, what am I going to do with these **** candles? and who helped me pick them out again? don’t dream it’s over, dell soap

The kettle is trying desperately to boil more water than it can hold, 1.7 liters,

it vibrates the table with its monotone groan.

Sixca says the flowers in the square vase are real, she touches their petals and says you can tell

because they’re wilted, they smell.

The coastline is vast— we are thumbtacks on the rocky hills, our lines cast out to sea. Sinking an anchor is an act of trust,

we believe the anchor will find the seafloor each time with the same length of rope let down.

The kraken will sleep, until he is awoken with fire.

There are wolf spiders perched atop the red seas of Wisconsin.

The kidney beans are the same color as the beets, but the beans do not bleed.

The cat’s back was greasy, brown-red; the harbor cat was not hungry in July.

I burnt my window screen with a blue candle split in two, its pieces held together in my palm.

I saw a sign that said Name it, they’ll do it — princess, robin, hello, cat, sugar, skull.

The stars do not boil in the St Paul airspace. The moon is bright and full. Photos can find my face, but ‘moon’ in the search bar yields nothing.

The kraken will die upon the water’s surface.

The love is intertwined with the horror, forever.

One might propagate pothos in glass, so as to see the white-yellow roots curl outwards, larger and swarming underwater.

Little bubbles form at the top of the kettle and now they soar rapidly towards its plastic cover, hissing.

Nothing smaller than your fist should be recycled.

The stale taste in your mouth grating
only remedied by more mints that melt away
into only more staleness.
some of your body is too warm and some of it cool
some of it itches from this shuttle bus seat which has crumbs from the last person who sat here.
The livid clouds outside are shifting across the sky, shirking nightfall, the street lamps fulgurating, giving the bus interior a ghastly glow.
there is not enough to look at, to listen to, to do, just the temporary sensations
of ******* on peppermint altoids, tapping on your phone, pressing your shoe heel into the soft skin of your thigh, feeling ugly but more tired than ugly under that harsh aisle seat light. Home soon, and not home soon enough.

Almost sad beneath their fantastic disguises, they crawl under the moonshine above. In a minor key, the lute strums— the marvelous night hums with the fervor of churning water; fountains of shining marble contain the ephemeral source, funneled towards heaven. Day breaks and moonlight slips away, the dancers abandon their masquerade and dissipate into the atmosphere. On the horizon, a castle across the yellow sea blushes pink, its shadow cast across the waves.