Plush Bunny

My poor little future, you could practically fit in a shoe-box like the one I kept peshul bunny in when I decided I was too old to sleep with her. I’d put a lid on the box every night. I knew she couldn’t breathe—she was stuffed, but I thought she’d like the dark, the quiet. She had eyes, I could see them. They were two stitches. My future has eyes, for a while. Then my future has stitches, like peshul’s. Then cool cotton, like her guts. Of course there is another world. But it is not elsewhere. The eye traps it so where heaven should be, you see shadows. You start to reek. That’s you moving on.

Max Ritvo, Plush Bunny 

FROM “YOU ARE NEARLY EVERY FUTURE”

The sounds of summer leave your lungs mid-autumn. Gulls rebuild the sky. It’s more or less a spectacle. With a gauze of dark circles under your eyes, you watch the whole world take a rain check. The clouds overlap until nightfall and you twiddle your thumbs at everyone’s mid-life crisis. The moon blinks inside out and no one notices. You do all the talking. The city lights acting as your voice.

A SMALL NEEDFUL FACT Is that Eric Garner worked for some time for the Parks and Rec. Horticultural Department, which means, perhaps, that with his very large hands, perhaps, in all likelihood, he put gently into the earth some plants which, most likely, some of them, in all likelihood, continue to grow, continue to do what such plants do, like house and feed small and necessary creatures, like being pleasant to touch and smell, like converting sunlight into food, like making it easier for us to breathe.

An Exhausted Poem Written While Staring Out the Window on the Last Bus Ride To Jim’s Farm

I wake up as myself in a room I’ve never been in. I wake up as an octopus. I have always been an octopus. I wake up as a tree, but all my limbs have been sold for broom sticks. I wake up as an ostrich digging holes in the sand. I wake up as a star, and my skin screams burning. I wake up as a tooth being ripped from the gum. I wake up as a broken spider. I wake up as God, and realize I’m dreaming. I wake up as a dandelion, and am swiftly swept away. I wake up in the same place that I always fall asleep in. I wake up as you. I have always been an octopus.

Nicole Oquendo | the iron hook

John Ashbery | This Room 

Jeffrey Morgan | The Mayor's Guide to Indiscretion