Volcano photo by Taro Taylor via Flickr Creative Commons“Frankie Cosmos Is a Good Band Name”
I always wait at least forty-five minutes after therapy before having sex. Every spring I pick up a second job planting pollen in dandelions. On Thursdays I listen to the same Frankie Cosmos track on repeat as I follow myself into the afternoon. Most mornings I wake up in a bed full of smaller beds. This morning is one of those mornings. You are next to me. Light trips through the blinds. Leigh, you say. You, I say. You ask if I knew I was sleeping while I was sleeping. I don’t answer. My eyes are too busy tracing your lips, the morning of your mouth. You say my name again, followed by something about a bagel. I think about my name. Leigh. Leigh. Leigh. Leigh. I like the way it slips out of your throat, as if it’s coated in margarine.
“Volcano Poem”
I should watch less movies. I should love more. I should learn how to slow the fuck down. I have learned there is only so much magic in medicine, only so much a mask can cover, that most of my poems mention hieroglyphics and I don’t know why, and that volcanos can cause thunderstorms now, it’s a thing, or maybe it was always a thing, so says the article you read to me on your iPhone while we let our pillows do the jobs they were hired to do. It’s late into the night and the night yawns. Every leap year I dream snakes curled into fireplaces. The next morning, I wake up three pages and end with a bullet in the brain. If you live long enough, everything is a gun or something that looks like a gun. I mentioned volcanos, but did I mention the lack of green in Greenland? Or the mass grave buried under the library in a Colorado suburb? America is still just as shitty as it was yesterday, as it was the day before yesterday, as it was twenty years ago yesterday, yet the birds are still here, yet Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are still in love, and yet, even so, the old man dressed like Santa is still standing in front of Macy’s, ringing a copper bell, smiling at his empty red bucket.