you’ve chosen for a body.

You see, you’re the reincarnation of my psychoanalyst.

For all eternity we’ve switched off as patient and doctor,

our souls twinned through countless bodies.

Your gift for gab is of cosmic import:

Just like neurons fire into a mind,

part habit, part chaos,

so too the world’s voices fire into a God.

Our chats are as important to God

as your thalamus is to you.

He can’t risk us not

analyzing one another forever—

he might have a seizure.

If this doesn’t make sense yet, don’t worry.

Tell me about your day,

and I will tell you about your day

until it is our day.

The boys at school teased you about your Velcro shoes?

I’m sorry but you’ll never outgrow them—

Last life, you were at the zoo, and a monkey

tied your laces together.

You fell on your face and the monkey laughed at you,

but despite your threats, you never started eating meat.

Things don’t change unless we want them to.

And why would we want to give up

the little things we know,

when we know so little?

Radiation in New Jersey, Convalescence in New York

RADIATION IN NEW JERSEY, CONVALESCENCE IN NEW YORK

I come from the place where the blender is the moon,

where the green bean is the body and the sun,

where the Ziploc bag prevents the lovers

from breathing the same evening.

I come from a place where the water’s emptiness

is so savage that

when you drink it

the fish of the throat die,

causing malignant thirst.

What’s a dazzler like you

doing in a dump like my bed?

No bedtime story for you tonight.

The telling of the tale could kill you, little Jesus.

It’s of a new, scary Jesus I think I found.

And if I share it, from that land

of harsh vinegars and blue light,

then his voice will be stronger than your voice.

I awoke on a table with a blue cylinder pressed to my neck.

From deep inside the cylinder I heard a sound

like a trembling man

opening the smallest can of soup—

a can with only one green bean in it.

Next to him, a woman is completely silent.

Feeding him the bean

becomes her only thought,

even when he tries to admire her beauty

or make her laugh.

She folds into the green glow

and nobody will listen to his news.

The sound wasn’t a gun.

It was a kiss.

It’s my mother—

I have to go.

Poem Set in the Day and in the Night

POEM SET IN THE DAY AND IN THE NIGHT

Just do things that are meaningful to you.

Go to the beach, says the Doc.

The man lies on his stomach.

The sand is fine, chewed through

by the waves many times over.

The sun is wide, like an eye cut open,