from other islands

april inventory:
so thin
I worry
what would I do
twenty-five boxes of Jell-O
the card of the world
a few cookie crumbs
an old lightbulb
something is living me
stealing my gravity
turning me into a plastic duck
a bottle of sand

currency
cure
a landscape
I know I’m going on and on
but really
white azalea
that black vase
& the dogwood petals
piling
up

she worries, is brittle
no silence she thinks
always something moving in the dirt
in the unconscious
potato, for example, left in ground
to engender more potato
& also memory of potato here
on the human side of things
we should be more tentative she thinks
when we turn the pieces over with
spoon into oil
what will happen
vinegar, salt
always something

only in their lives
she worked by sound also
the sizzle coming clean
turned her head
bit into a disc of squash
sausages hanging in her hallway
tremor in the earth we perched upon
I could have asked her something
but there was no shape for me to take

it had an orange in it
I’m pretty sure
& gum stuck to it
& a radio playing somewhere
baseball maybe
it might have been an island
or an ice bucket
I knew someone there
who had worked in a famous prison
or maybe July
with strawberries
the green of something
just outside the frame
wait
it’s coming to me

now we are working
next to the blue pot
so right & prosperous
some vegetables more than others
how to cut ideas for saving/salvaging
you must never apologize
except you might sometimes or always
boiling over, burning
the stink of cutting boards
the honest knives at ease
side by side