#rejectscorner

all that is left of you is tethered to a tremor.

your absence widens, and keeps on widening until we are finally separate.

the gulf between us is a star-fed river.

the gulf between us is a light-starved chasm.

I watch you convulse, collapse into yourself.

you, a soft nebulous shadow that grows warm and bright, incandescent, from a seed.

so quiet. so very quiet.

you spin away in the vacuum of space. pulse light. scintillate morse code answers.

i hear the silence.

i hear everything you want to say.

school roll call is a wave we catch with strangers

a union of souls

carried on a tidal pulse

each swell a perpetual timeline

that chronologically binds us

regardless of the patterns we make when scattered

carbon dated to an era of large hair styles

we know full names

not just bill

but william morten

who pulled a filling out of his tooth with a mintie

sometimes we carry a name to the end

like some sacred scroll

minutely attached to twenty seconds

twenty seconds that will loop into the future

housed in the lamp of our nostalgia

new friends

unstrangered

by the house of their laundry detergent

a grand linen whale

breaching the air with its tail

new friends on a deep dive

by the glow of the tv’s movie marathon

questions naively profound

that keep us up all night

& every second suburban record collection

contains a country album titled back home again

it opens a portal when played

high in the rockies

where everyone’s a songwriter

miles from home

chugging sadness from a bottle

lamenting old feather beds & cakes on the griddle

meanwhile we’re just hooked on things that dice

because dicing cheats time

the lens flare from the k-tel blade hangs above the studio like a ghost

the infomercial host saw his sister in its outline

wept with the onions

my memory is jerry rigged

a black slate

holding a dissolving snowflake

in japan

the johatsu

burdened with shame

evaporate into the night

roll call’s digital footprint

erased

so they can begin again

Not like it did.

I wonder if there were nights where your throat ran dry with my name on your lips.

I wonder if you ever regretted it. If you ever wished you could take it back?

I wonder if there were times where you almost called me, but decided against it.

I wonder if it haunts you the way it haunted me.

There were some nights that I thought of you.

I thought of the life that we could’ve had. Could’ve built.

I wondered what you were doing out there in the world.

I wondered if you had found your perfect bride.

Your perfect American Dream family.

I’ll admit it.

I even looked you up.

the coliseum’s achingly placative

a thousand things you must see before you die

is streaming free to air

humans in electronic headlocks

lost in the dementia of carousels

take the emoji high road

unicorns bound for nebbiolo

could be why

gravity is super heavy today

drunk mercurial jockeys cover the mountains like mukhwas

dreaming by the wildflowers

their petals form a pinch

a ruffle to the fog

& in their grasp

each flower holds a poem about the darkness

the world is in messianic famine

it calls from the equator of our guts

we follow animal tracks

for pantry demands

today’s pilgrimage is brought to you

by

jerky in the shape of political candidates

everyone’s eating their feelings

to make space

I jettison trivial cache

bespoke license plates & such

it plumes a mental steak

all the gulls take aim

disappearing in a feathered legerdemain

moses is in the gutter

the squeegee guy

spruiking traffic

swears he saw an arm

riddled with track marks

descend from the sky

wrote a name in the stone

& scattered sugar for the comedown

before the billion cameras

the squeegee guys were surveillance

scribes would pass through the night

remotely yelling their names from the hardened concrete

what are the statistics on lady vandals

I see displaced men

their spent feet delivering them to the streets of public grace

streets reckoned for heroes

holding signs we never seriously appraise

A naked emperor

Parading

Thinking admiration

Is why they're all staring

At your jiggly tummy

And hard to see willy

With just a crown on

You look, at best, silly

Here is a mirror

Blink your eyes sir

Til delusion fades

And you see clearer

You're just a jester

Amusing the crowd

With grandiose stories

You tell far too loud

All the tales you spin

What'd you expect

No one worships a ruler