No, We Met

A girl raps shyly to herself

above her English muffin.

All you go around is remembering

how one commercial kicks in

with a four-minute harpsichord solo

or an old professor anxiously

declined the eggplant parm.

Uh, it’s from the nightshade

family—I’ll pass. Around you

gone. One day contains and one

day is the cranberry health mix:

full stop. Showers and stairwells.

Throwing away a Christmas present

once you hit the opposite coast.

I serve my guests toast instead

of tortilla chips and they’re

down with that. O to know what secret

nicknames people give you

at the gym. To walk with a hot light bulb

in your mouth, trying not to swallow

or bite down. I know how it sounds,

but it really does help to remember

how you do want

to feel. I didn’t know what a poem

was until I’d read a thousand poems

and forgotten I would say about

nine hundred and four.

Everybody Here Either

for BF

Please observe all means necessary

to keep us all safe

is what the building owner wanted us

to notice on the sheet.

Spoon around in the ancient grains.

Questions of personality

choices resolved by color

choices. Chewie roars whether

the joke is old or not.

Sadness isn’t something you can notice

away. My friend peeling the labels:

“I’m thirty-one, I thought I’d be way

different.” The thunderstorm plays

itself out, that’s what it wants, age-

ncy of assemblage, momentary nature

of the screaming underneath

all that quote unquote

dangerous hail.