What does it mean to be lying on my bed

and feel nothing belongs to me? The world is…—

Detached? /

/ Simulacrum??

—have we finally reached the place where the movie

I’m watching is more real than reality? The irony: the movie

is The General, from 1926—the movie is silent, is black

and white, is the kind of thing made when morals

were loose and people noticed because reality was still

a thing that existed, a green light’s flashing, if distant.

It is December 2022—here is Pennsylvania—I am Lizzy,

now a poet and a wife. These should be my anchors,

but I could just as easily write: it is April 1865—here is

Washington D.C.—I am Dolley Madison, once a First

Lady, now a painting. Maybe it’s not that things

are less real, it’s that we’re noticing how categories

always have been just that: categories, nothing more,

nothing less. The words that stood for something

have always been ink on a page. The land we stole

to give our noble ideas a home, a real place

we could defend … — In China, people are

waving blank sheets: the thing Kaminsky

said he must write upon over and over, to keep the dead

from waving flags of their surrender. The dead in Urumqi

are still dead, turned to black ash, while white paper

protests catch wind. Over and over. Maybe simulacrum

means this: not that reality ceases to exist,

but reality has always been a place    beyond what’s left to say.

My family forked mashed potatoes, peas,
and Salisbury steak from Swanson’s TV dinners
served on TV trays as a reporter’s urgent voice

narrated poorly filmed scenes: green blur of jungle,
young men toting guns and ammo, helmets heavy.
I read comics as I ate: Batman, Richie Rich,

Sad Sack. What did Vietnam have to do with me?
After school, Keith K. and I played with army men
of metallic blue and olive green, the two sides

in their enmity poured from the same mold
and striking the same poses. A sniper crawled
supine, a soldier raised a bayonet overhead,

one took a knee to steady his bazooka, another flung
a grenade. Some merely marched, weapons slung
over shoulders. Others hunched over rifles,

and their leader wielded only a pistol. In battle,
Keith and I made spitty sounds of gunfire,
hurled dirt clods, and detonated bombs

deep in our throats. We never dreamed up
reasons for our fighting. We just went at it,
gung-ho. Our war was endless

entertainment—until, come suppertime,
our parents called us in. We never declared
who won or lost—soon, our truce would end,

our make-believe resume. I collected my little men
and hosed them clean, while Keith, who’d ground
his troops into the dirt to hide them,

couldn’t find them all. He left them buried.
Maybe they’d turn up tomorrow, maybe not.
What did we know of war? It strikes me,

these years later, Keith’s grasp was far superior.
What happened during. What came after.

January comes, and he forgets to look both ways when crossing
the street. To say forget implies innocence, that it was not a choice.

Light that is not quite morning not yet day sleeping just
below the sky’s marbled skin. Morning is another way of saying

is it over yet? Over his doorway, he staples jade leaves for good luck.
He believes he needs it, his face looking both forward and back,

as if his past indiscretions might help better steer him from the
future’s pitfalls. He does not trust himself with this world.

It is far too thorny, too quick to draw blood. This world wears eyes
in the back of its head, never letting him out of sight.

Where has all the love gone, he often wonders. At crowded
crosswalks, he can nearly feel the velvet breath of the tomb.

Men leave him behind in his bed because he lacks the courage
to transform into a gold finch, a lion, a dragonfly. Anything

that might make him miraculous. Instead, he accepts that he
is a sonata with no name. A music that seeps into the peat

and becomes food for the speckles of creation we cannot see.
When he returns home, he pulls the same books from the same shelves,

elucidating on the machinations of lovers who are closer to being ghosts
than being his own. Time is sour, metallic. Like blood in his mouth.

Like a split lip. He swallows the darkness of his room every night.
Drowns in it. Gorges himself with it. He is imagining waking before

he’s wise enough to fall asleep. He is, most days, merely dying and living.
Living and dying. He is two heads for the price of one,

certainty in the uncertain; proof that nothing, not even love, can be proven.
But today is a good day: he chooses to look both ways when he crosses the street.

The Feast of Flowers: A Floral Game of Fortune
Adams & Co, 1869

a flower appears in my dream

not nodding

they don’t always nod

and reminds me of Trisha, a florist,

who always told me—

branches in a field of moss behind her—

about arrangements, the structure of corsages,

and the languages no one speaks any more

the flower tells me

that humans speak the language of chemicals

but they aren’t very good at it, flowers though

it is their only way

a pause

but that’s not quite right

we use light in ways your eyes can’t see

and now the nod

… [Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine]

yourself behind John Rawls’ veil of ignorance.
You know nothing about your gender, your country’s stance

on faith or border, your age, your health, your assets. There,
in such a swaddling, pronounce. It gets much harder,

doesn’t it? Suddenly, you become a fan
of the conditional. You write in pencil, not pen—

… [Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine]

In this photograph, he cannot move––
his right hand will pierce
the sky, suspended,
open, it cannot touch

nor grip nor hold.
The sun tangles sap
in his golden hair, makes a lamp
of his pink cheek––lighting

… [Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine]

Anna came in hot / told Mom she was having / an abortion / Mom said wait / and didn’t she
know Mom and Dad / had been trying / to have another baby / and no they couldn’t / could
she? / do it / for her mother? / Anna crackled and heaved molten / warm teenaged tears / ran
from the house / who doesn’t want a mother’s love? / being born a twin / Anna’d always had
half / of everything / Anna said she would / grow into an offering / incubate a sister / ash to
ash / kindle to kin / I saw that she wore / the same / big / black and red polka dot sweater /
day after day / despite the swelter / of summer in Florida / she covered / what she didn’t want
/ her classmates / to see / sometimes Anna let me come near / hold my hand to creation / feel
her shimmer / Anna ballooned into a circle / floated away one day / seemed to me / but they
just took her / chopped her / open / took the baby out / put nothing in / to her arms / I sat on
Anna’s bed / Anna said / I Don’t Want To Scare You / and showed me / the staple marks /
biting her / belly like a bear snare / I wasn’t scared / then / but now I’m a mother / I know /
I could / never / burn my child / the way they burned Anna / from the inside / licking her up /
with their own trapped longing

Help. I can’t stop opening my phone.
Someone has placed my life on a high shelf
where I cannot reach it. Help me.
I keep toying with time
like it isn’t a tiger on fire.
Worse, my interest in the rhyme
between satiety and society
makes me full. When it doesn’t,
I try to remember we’re all drunk
under one slant of sun. Help.
I’ve fallen on the concrete
details of capitalism. I’ve had too much
to eat. Please don’t touch me. When thinking,
students say my face looks like hatred.
When thinking about thinking, I imagine
a camera turning in a windowless room,
trying to get an angle on itself. Once,
lifting my hand from an itch,
I saw the ant’s illegible dismemberment.
Worse, my interest in the rhyme
between satiety and society makes me full
of fear. When it doesn’t, I remember a friend’s
recommendation: a good pair of sweats
to weather these secular heavens in. Help. I’ve fallen
through this little window of infinite distraction.
I’ve learned fire ants, on a raft of their own bodies,
can weather floods for weeks. They all survive. Help.
I’ve learned: replace ecstasy with spectacle.
I’ve learned: don’t quit your daydream.
That always, in science, the most pertinent question
is why is there something rather than nothing? I have
had too much to drink. Please kiss me. My ugliness
is needing to be everybody’s good boy. What’s yours?
Worse, my interest in the rhyme between
satiety and society makes me full of fear
I have nothing to say about it. But, you mistook me
when I said nothing has meaning.
I meant it the other way.

and a tenderness swept over my skin for the man
who knew my thighs, all fathappy, in younger years.

We were good, ya know, sometimes.
And here he was oblivious to my observation—

for a swift, floating moment—we were alone again:
me watching, he not noticing. The thing

we once had, sinewtorn by vultures, briefly
parted the clouds. He sat in the sun.

… [Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine]

and bring wax. I’ve used all of mine even
fogged holiday candles. I’ve burnt

a string run through hard fat from my bacon.
Please. Or I’ll be forced to rob bees at knifepoint

and politely collect their products for months.
Please bring a crystal ball. I asked around

but no-body carries anything round in their palms
or chest since you’ve gone. Please bring pictures

of your mother and sisters, there aren’t enough
here to render or read or eat from. Bring my voice

asking at an older age or any sound you decide.
But bring a watch and paper and map it out. Pass over

like a comet or pass through like a note between fingers.
Just bring any oranges and your compass. You never owned one

but please bring one and name it, make it your own.
I have to insist you bring your hours

and your purse and hand-foods
and your perfume
and your
and you
and