Four Poems

Untitled

It’s funny, our conditions

For communicating have never felt

Better, like it’s never been

Easier to talk to someone you are

Separated from by decent fractions

Of a world, or even

Language, but on the

Other hand these conditions

They have also never been more

Mediated, like when I go

To say hello

To you

On the app we use

For talking all this happens:

I get an ad

I see a message from another friend

I realize my saved

Searches don’t have my wife at the top

Which feels wrong, so I go to her

Profile again

Hi Kristi

I get another ad

& I finally open up

The messages part

I see you left me a voice note

I like voice notes, they do not demand

An immediate response

Which usually I cannot give

Anyway, but after

Enough of these you sort of start to see

Immediacy as its own gift

Like in a flesh-and-blood

Or even telephone conversation

The back-and-forth doesn’t sit

With you as long, it’s not enough extended

Pressure to stretch the fabric, quick

Replies like fingers passing through a candle

Flame, not burning a single digit

Why is it so hard?

Even with our friends, our loved

Ones, why can it be so hard?

& I can hear the voices

Already, saying things like

If it’s difficult, that must mean

There is something wrong.

What you’re calling love

Is actually an ashpot lid

On top of manipulation

/abuse

/classic psychoanalytic

Familial frigidity—

But that’s not true.

Haven’t you ever loved someone

It was impossible to talk to?

If not about anything

Some things?

Haven’t you ever addressed

Someone completely

Dear to you,

The rich veins of personal

& other histories running through you

Both like

Adjacent mountains,

Knowing there

Was a perfect gridlock

Like an orrery in which rotate

You, your dear one, and the thing

You most hoped to express?

Always at a fixed distance?

Completely scared

& never alone?

There bully me, in these hills,

Various deer

Who threaten to jump

In front of the car at night—

They’re less than shadows until they’re not

So every time it’s a chance game,

Trusting caution

& abandon to dance

Then show me the card at the end

Of the evening

If they remember. They might have

Better things to do by then.

The ladybug on my stick of deodorant

Is alive as long as I’m talking

& not putting any on.

White Freightliner

Remember, you can perceive
something without your phone knowing you
perceived it. In January
a high wind will take the tear away

Bible verses from the bulletin board
and deposit them in the animal shelter
parking lot. I don’t know what to do
about the phrase “plain American

cats and dogs could read” I read
in the Randall Jarrell book
an ideal or an opponent
crabgrass choking everything out

and taking over. I watched
a Molly Tuttle video and now the ads
think I play guitar, or want to
learn, which now I kind of do.

Untitled II

I couldn’t read the truth
in lending statement
the internet was so bad

In the painting, angled
sections of color meet at
a point, & along edges

Someone uploaded a video
of their slow boyfriend
& the comments were a mix

In the notes a poet
explains their use of “t”
over “ed” (e.g. wreckt)

I dreamt of a poem called “SAINT THOMAS”
& that was it, just the title then blank space

Poetry

Wet food for adult cats, the stars you can’t see, a cup of water after a glass of milk, finding the other glove, decommissioned death ray, calendar with no Tuesdays, the saint’s finger bone accidentally transferred to the poorest church, finding something you had lost in the hiding place you were going to use for something else, surprise kheer with plenty of cardamom, a live version of that one song, space dust past our light cone, light touch of the regretful soldier, the many refusals that make us, hovering around the decision like a fly looking to leave and finding only glass, only glass