Extinction Opus, No. 16
The future on stilts now. Corpus callosum like a paperclip unbent. Co-mingling. They say, “dirty” they say, “rent.” You write letters that no heaven could decipher: Post habitat-ectomy, the worms loft pixels don’t shuck earth. The doctor extant, but aloof. You scoop the gripe, insert, gulp. It comes out odd. Whack-a-mole for the psychologically sad. The parts console. “No seams,” they say. “You are practically seamless.” Post-clothes, you wear out the notes. C flat, G minor. The skin wilts—you rename the future by what it predicts. A tree: canoe in progress. Forsythia: yellow wands to lodge a vase. In this way, nothing gets past the parts.
Extinction Opus, No. 17
Darning the world— a widening sock. Mahogany axed solitary lash of trap where last saw saola, latitudes like bars or bark that serve relapse. All trumpet, that lover left notes: we are too alike, you might be affected by my moats and such. So thus, goodbye. Cannot lay blame. Need him a destroyer not an empty dress. Live-snare, electrical bolts. Habitat sold, you spread like sumac, mate with one eye open. Cast spells. Eye of newt and forest vat. Bare as veal in pens. Your past catches, latches on.
The Woman Who Climbed The Beanstalk
Sick in June, I started having the dreams again, of the giant, offering his office for me to hide from some terrible crime I’d done on his behalf. I funneled money out of his mattress, into my mouth. “Hope drinks through a straw,” he said in the dream, nodding. In 1970, Soviets drilled a hole so deep the core seeped out and turned to birds, slick magenta flock. I was wingless at thirty. I said, crush me, demolish me, do something. The roundup won’t fit down my throat. Will I go sterile from the tap water alone? Will the pesticides turn me on? My hair is full of drug history and Vidal Sassoon. My sinuses have violins sticking out. Even when I woke, I wasn’t sure what I was fleeing from. When the sun gives up, we’ll still arabesque for eight minutes, unaware. The doctors ask, “Still Vitamin C, still ibuprofen, probiotic, nasal spray, antihistamine, zinc?” The giant orders octopus, arugula, flatbread, coke. My inner throat has a homunculus. I pickled a harmonica. I wanted the music to outlive the dream.