everyday with me another hangfire. This wait

isn’t foreign to any of us. This wait is a friend

splitting blinds, looking for his cliché of a father.

It is a foot pressed against the door

of a locked closet. A girl stands in line in the rain

holding two concert tickets and this

is what rattles us, the space after

a question mark. Blood work and CAT scans.

What man faces a firing squad

without eventually longing for an exit wound.

This is stupid, but I was afraid to tell you

I kept fiddling with my phone through dinner

because I was fascinated

that every time I tried to type love,

I missed the o and hit i instead.

I live you is a mistake I make so often,

I wonder if it’s not

what I’ve been really meaning to say.

I want to say there is patience at the center

of every firework I hear bloom

from my balcony, signaling the end

of a Tigers game, but I can’t see them.

The second floor isn’t high enough. Clouds

above the taller buildings flicker, reflecting

their light, so tonight I’m going to watch that instead.

Make an evening of it. A dinner date

with myself and a bowl of handmade guacamole

from Honey Bee Market, and this time

I’m going to wait

to find out if one, just one,

can get high enough for me to see it explode.

The Hum of Zug Island

The Hum of Zug Island

In Windsor they blame it on machines

across the Detroit River. Residents can’t ignore

the low frequency hum taking the shape of a sea-

serpent on oscilloscopes. Beyond gray snow,

plastic bags, and crushed hypodermic needles,

Zug Island is humming—waiting

the way the organs in me are waiting.

My body is a building full of machines,

some more complex than others: needle-

nosed pliers, pistols, a satellite—all ignoring

my commands to sit still. The snow

wants to kiss us, I hear my skin say. The sea

pouring from gutters toward the sea

that must be out there waiting,

eardrums covet the rushing. Just snow-

melt, I say to the thrumming machines,

but my voice is easy to ignore.

So I find myself drawn again to needles

of light through drawn blinds, needles

of wind through a window’s failing. A sea

of all the outside I try to ignore,

the hum that won’t calm and won’t wait.

This oscillating piston of a heart, the machine

that should know better, wants to see snow

tremble. It goes on about this rumor of snow

vibrating on that island where old factories needle

into the sky. You can hear it, a machine

that doesn’t know it’s dead sending a sea

of pulses across shore because it’s tired of waiting

for someone to talk to, tired of being ignored.

I know they want to answer it. Don’t ignore