Feeling in pain when there is no stomach-ache. / There is only the pain of the mind and hundreds and thousands / of small gold oblongs wired into a surface. Into this burns the sun,

If I can’t say, brother, what I meant to say, tell yourself a grudge was my homage to you. / The benevolent bulk of your shadow, dragon like, cutting the wounded helpfully / the anticipation of sewing them back together. Like watching grass grow.

It seemed endless and then / it didn’t disappear but / there was no way to

I took a thing from my car that wasn’t supposed to be there. I stopped bothering to say hi to my white neighbors because they never say hi back. The cosmos kept blowing up like a snake in a fake peanut brittle box.  I stopped buying corn from the woman at the final stall because she already was constantly complaining about non-problems but then, as I was rearranging my groceries in my tote, squatted down by the corner of the table, she said are you keeping an eye on the something something and I said what and realized she was telling the Amish woman who worked for her to keep an eye out for shoplifters. Mopping the cool of the browbeater. Block me or I’ll block you first. I saw us eating pizza sleepily while on the timeline of the cosmos, an infinity of dead stretched before us. I would be hard pressed to pick one memory from this life to use as a bridge to oblivion. Walking in a cold meadow after a swim. Sitting on my dad’s chest as an infant. Laughing so hard with Jenny we couldn’t breathe, throwing stuffed animals. A made-up game.

The air in the rocks speaks. / The pits in the vase speak. / The sheep caught on a hard slant speak.