I can hear light switches and doors and dog tags that sound like sleigh bells but without the heavy weight and familairity, almost like a ball gown that isn’t gone, a grown up gown that used to be behind doors and behind doors only but Amelia Earhart started the trend of bloomers with her transatlantic nap until we all wake up to find dinner on the table, chinese again, extra tofu and hold the msg please, we have to make it ‘til Dog-Scaring Friday.

I eat a cookie before the road, a bus with strangers and others and sweatpants. Two auroras later and we meet up to hide under a neon martini glass, to hide from the First Avenue crowds until a full moon helped us find our way t Green Bay – this being a sign of warning but with friendly help, we found our way home to where my grandfathers’ name is embedded in the sidewalks, where his Mother found an occupied gallows knot, where we first met under a bridge until, full of pancakes and monkeyshines, where we parted ways with care packages



Ξthree rolls of film Ξhis shirt that he wore on our last night together Ξ

Ξ three flashlights Ξone pocketsized notebook Ξone nude photograph Ξlychees Ξ


But we wish for Minneapolis again so we can make champagne cocktails out of yeasty rivers, prosecco and seasonal bite size bottles of amaretto, butter on the side until we can go where? The No Name Bar? Into the cirrus clouds? A city named Normal? No, for now we will just stay in tangerine chairs until I know I have a heart because it’s breaking.

substitution lime juice

you taught she how to save lives under a wish tree full of spare change but you could never take away the cheeky laugh from the girl on the subway, claiming underground beauty would never hold up what little was left of you. the difference between she (the poet) and you (the writer) doesn’t make a difference anymore. we’re blending forms, turning the pink function into a ridiculous way of telling fortunes or an explanation that an octopus would find repulsive.

you takes no time to tell his own objections to this change, takes a vicodin, takes his time to wash away the sidewalk Van Gogh (crown royal on the side) you takes a breath, a line, align, a pause, an opposition, a sigh, assigning she to watch his thumb wrestle with her nameless finger: because she never pulled my hair as I stared up her torso, she never pulled, she just felt.

you (the writer) {or a writer} tells she (the poet) {or a poet} about teaching, blushing, getting caught in the bramble-branches of language, the art of lose and failure. she (the poet) {or THE poet} tells you (the writer) {or THE writer} how the girl on the subway was only being polite, was drunk, was buzzing like a welcome mat, wasn’t right to say it’s nice to see you. the girl was a stranger for a reason and should stay that way.