But I Don’t Want to Get to Know You

As the crow flies, I’m a cross between Sheryl and Russell
whose gladiator’s every first cut’s deepest.
At this point in my living room, every door’s a window.
Go around. We forgot to dim the blackout curtains,
who like Sheryl soak up the sun, snooze beneath them each noon
in fitful allergenic. When God opens a window,
it’s the eyes of the soul, and they blink
through the holes poked inside
to make phosphene constellations.
God’s not closing the door,
but he is flicking the door stopper spring
so it sounds like a woodpecker’s stutter — my favorite season.
Are you not intertwined? A trust bears you soulward in
a cardinal direction, to the team I didn’t know existed
the first three years I lived in Arizona. Three whole springs
I’ve missed without touching down. My first step
is the weakest, and please I’m begging you go around,
one of many things I’m begging off you, among others
to stop saying I’m Australian, I never would be,
the way they say haytch it’s like they put another h in front.

Opossum Coroner

Somewhere each day an opossum coroner
crumples up another autopsy report
& kicks aside the caution tape
huffs to blow away the fingerprint dust
dumps a bucket of water on the chalk outline
which disappears and smears itself
down the roadside like ruined hopscotch

all his work spoiled by revival of surprise
duties you haven’t considered or matters of life
put on ice in case for once the cold pink nose
doesn’t twitch awake America’s only marsupial
this factoid as per my dad whose diabetes
added to Covid to drag him near the coroner
himself when I called teary three states away
to say the last words I probably stole
from a film in retrospect & performed
but who can really demand more
than to bring things back on the right occasion

for example this morning I texted my friend
who will not go on record here
about a poet we both hated in the MFA
being interviewed on a famous show
my friend was already listening to on earbuds
then texted our third pal to coordinate a great
occasion for hatred—not the same as hate much funnier —
& believe you me we put the boots to the poet
who was lucky to come out alive as my father
whose voice in my head reminded me it was ugly
so we swore it off knowing ugly always returns
plans its next appointment
before leaving the office or clocking

a death we know is fake on blank forms in triplicate
better yet not a death but an unaliving
a word housing its opposite in plain sight
a body standing beside its own shroud
playing dead on 2x speed to come out a chipmunk Lazarus
the first recorded case of being story-topped
Lazarus whom the Gospels tell us wore linen
because when you’re rotting who cares about wrinkles
and one must further imagine the titanic “I told you so”
Mary Magdalene let rip coming away from the tomb
on the day of the resurrection
high-stepping through Jerusalem
like Draymond Green at a championship parade

not only opossums play dead but also the lemon shark
which lies upside down in a state called tonic immobility
a state an ex might find you in on a New Year’s Eve
lying just so by the dartboard & covered in linen
you two unsure who is coroner and who opossum
both scrounging in the garbage can to get ugly again
rentals no one wants returned items stored outside the pyramid
cheat meals you have to swallow to keep down
an unblocked revenant who lives to malign again
hot singles are in your area rising from the dead

Herman and Vernon

I dreamed — dreamt? — I knew two tubists
they joined us in the town orchestra
I don’t know what I played but I sat next to the tubists
so possibly trumpet. That’s against type for me
I who am not brassy or pursed but mousy and loose
nobody in the orchestra could tell them apart
the two tubists but get this: they looked nothing alike
Herman was buzzcutted with crowded murine teeth
and Vernon languid, lissome, fond of Ls
yet each time the conductor called on them
he frowned behind his razor-sharp baton
and said “Vernon? Herman?” confused
Gwen who played the recorder which was
key to my dream orchestration made
the same mistakes. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“But your names are so similar.”
Vernon and Herman would protest and whine
and I observed this from a chair then overhead
and thought how rhymes twin us when nothing else
does. Bullies get this right away: Bart — fart.
James—lames. “Don’t you think,” I asked Herman,
“it’s less lonely with a homonym, more
homely in the physical, caught outside a dream?”
“No,” he said. “And my name is Vernon.”
“Forget that,” I said. “Listen.” I shook him
and wanted to say, “Gwen loves you, is it true?”
but I could not speak or move and I rose from bed
and no one rhymed. There was no music
Cars drove in reverse. I never saw a tuba.
I spoke in perfect prose and couldn’t hear it.

If Not No Worries

Like everyone else I practice smiling in the car
Holding it for a minute in traffic because someone said
It improves your mood, one of those people we know
Against our will in short bursts.

At a stoplight a jogger peers inside the windshield
Where my grin’s flexed like a planking exercise,
Ten more seconds and I can return to scowling.

Smoke alarms prompt a midnight fire drill
And Jim stands beside me in blue sleep shorts
Gripping his orange cat Jason whose hip clicks
Each time he chases me to the mailbox.

It’s a lovely cat I tell him but he doesn’t plank
His face back at me regardless of what I say
Even though it’s not my alarm and I love cats.

Though I didn’t always, a friend kept one I didn’t stroke
Which haunts me as does all the other beauty
I evaded, sunpinked fingertips on a polyester hip
Spinning beneath your hand when the DJ says to.

If not that then what? Kratom in a plastic cylinder
Or Jim knocks at night to question me so I declare,
“The immortal man was not meant to work in open
Floor plans or lintroll his fleece vest.”

But Jim says there’s a kind of grape they make
Injected with flavor to taste like bubblegum
And my every pretense drops against my will
The sugar lift of something new I’m waiting
Only forever to find something to live for.