The lining on Mr. Chepman's blue Upper Valley Cab Co. jacket looks like the interior of his car and he is driving it two buildings over to pick up Mrs. Plarst for her dialysis ride. She hates him because he plays Motown Mornings on Oldies WLLZ, and he hates her because he has to fold up her walker and put it in his trunk.

Must have at least (45) forty-five Concessions.
some Educational Shows, a good Plantation
show and not more than two gypsies.

I’ve got something you can defund,
right here. There is a hot sun,
just the other side of the clouds.

choking down entire argument in record time
continuing calculations are getting far closer
to where i want to be than where i need to be
unhealthy eroticism is in sensitivity training
so that it won't be instantaneously spooked

Scribe. With a name known only to himself. Waits to pen letters to friends in Tunisia
Algiers, Morocco, or
Amsterdam. Writing to family, we scribble thumbnail sketches of ourselves, or who
we remember startled us

He’s come to hate the academy, its sterile rigors.
Steel rails, parallel; long ribbon of wooden ties:
all night, all day, trains rattle that whole apparatus.
He lays his poem anthology on the track.

You, volunteer:
You know the difference
Between cause and effect:
The people on the street
Are too stupid to have homes
Too filthy to wash

we’re cycling & recycling as fast as we can but can’t get there in time
for the job, the damaged free stuff, the barbed assignation,
and usually need to replace something by the time we get home—
a tire, a lens, an ankle.

I sense my grandmothers.
I am now the age
they always seemed to be
with stern blood understanding
once removed from the sting of judgment.

This flower was labeled Whitey;
this flower was marked Nigga Lover.
     Is she still alive?
     Didn’t he pass recently?
     Was it in the paper?

There’s something straining us. Since birth we praised
his lineage, put wealth at his command,
and hubris has obeyed. He lifts his hand,
the throngs align, his inner organs raised

it is not yet complete:
some of us are still here, webbed with
confused winds, the dirt below us
cold, moving in new directions.
we notice all fall down quicker than before,

i listen to the impatient dead
who never existed, however much
i wish they had lived their absence

Ohhhh do it. Worldwide. Uhhuh uhhuh uhhuh. Telecommunications. Uhhuh uhhuh. Telecommunication link link ahh up links ooohhhhh telecommute me it's so. Spectacular cash award for your yesyes unparalleled investment protections. Oh christ yeah. Pure cash. Yeah it's so good to uh uh cash me cash me in.

you cozy up to anyone
stepping off a freight train
with a patch above their hearts

assistance     gone     alone with both     lonely     days without     both fluish angry needing   not
their fault     hungry   homework     nights without    can’t sleep, doesn’t      doctor says just one
pill per     small hands stretching, reaching     must watch them closely   always       loads of
laundry   hungry   exhaustion     just one pill     bedwetting wakes older   regression   consoling

…death’s heads some absence here or of what sensed in outstretched limbs a broken jawline’s exigency/ stone winds resurgence ever where nothing of reeks blind taste some solace no return again begin again/ in wind’s reveal of collapse bitten as if to cherish pummeling absurdly lock associative/ till skull skinned screaming in an abort of flame settling into ash...

11 major organ systems
Size 12 ft.
22 sq. ft. skin