We stood in line for twenty minutes behind a family whose baby wouldn’t stop staring at me. Naturally, I waved at the baby and the father sneered at me and moved so that the baby faced the other way. It was probably for the best because I have no idea how to entertain children past making faces and looking like a fool and seeing as I was surrounded by people on all sides, that wouldn’t end well. When we finally paid admission, they stamped the word SMILE on the back of each of our right hands in ink that looked suspiciously like blood. But my brother was ready to get on some rides and so we entered Joyland, a dinky amusement park hidden within the largest actual park in town. Everything was funnel cake and screaming children and entirely different songs being played from each ride giving the air this glossy, almost flexing texture. Joyland has apparently been around since forever and maintenance was likely last done shortly after the park was built. On one of the rides, a security bar popped off and the machine started making a horrible thudding sound when our cart was parallel to the ground but the ride operator was too busy shamelessly checking out the *** of his coworker to notice and I pondered, before what I assumed would be my dramatic and terrible death, how often this had happened before over the years and how silly it would be to die over some pastel colored short-shorts. But that’s how these things happen. “No more noble deaths” we had all agreed on at some point and we put down our swords and took up shovels for the earth and everything was good until someone looked at us wrong and there we were again staring at short-shorts and letting an ancient ride disintegrate with people on it because seeing and hearing two different things at the same time is not something that gets covered during the training days at Joyland.

I once knew a woman
who said she had a dream about
water and that it had helped
her predict 9/11
and I still don't know
how to make heads or tails
of that
other than it's just something
that is.

You asked me the other day
the level to which I would be affected
if you were to die suddenly
and I keep thinking about that
and I keep imagining you gone
and a piece of me dies every day
imagining the loss of you
even though you're just a phone call
away and we just talked about
beans this morning
and everything is fine and beautiful
and our hearts ache peacefully
across the country from one another

My father
my hero
has crumbled to dust
and I really just
don't feel like vacuuming
tonight

how inconvenient, indeed

There's something
I love about amusement parks
in that you can lose yourself
for a minute in all the noise and haze
and you forget that
the Neon Mystics are nothing more
than 15 year-olds
forced into their first job at
the local theme park by their parents
because they need to learn that
the real world isn't all fun and games
and perhaps this profound wisdom
is wasted on the youth
who don't yet realize that there
are worse fates than
a summer job
at the theme park

I have this terrible
habit
of meeting the best
sorts of people
right before I
have to go somewhere else
to begin anew

I took a walk through
an old park that used to
be important to me
and the air still smelled
slightly fruity and rich with
wildlife
and I found that one
Very Special Tree
in which I had carved the initials
of myself and a girl I had loved at the time
and as the tree has grown
the letters have become blurred
with scar tissue
and are now unreadable
which is probably for the best
all things considered