and the paper lanterns almost catching fire.

I missed the plastic chimney glasses, emptied

of their cocktails, being set on a table and swept

down into a bag. I missed the part where they

honeymooned in Lisbon. I missed it

when they bought the house with the mudroom

and the mansard roof. I missed it when they retired

somewhere placid. I missed their birthdays, every

year, and then I missed it when they died

and were buried in the dirt with their jewelry on.

I was still sitting there at the rented table,

in front of a single charred onion on a skewer,

thinking of all the guests who had to decline,

thinking of them in hospitals, attended to by loved

ones who had little to say aside from

I HATE HOSPITALS, but whose tenderness

still carried through. I was thinking of the times

I have attempted to exit my body. I was thinking

of how I’d had nowhere to go. I was wishing

for a smaller body hidden within my body,

a smaller site to which I might retreat.

I was wishing for a canny escape not only

from what is around us, but also from what

is pitiless and ambulant and tacky and can lodge

one layer beneath the surface layer of our very

skin. Only under that is where we are.

The Greatest Two Minutes in Sports

The Greatest Two Minutes in Sports

Brims and booze and paneled

rooms and paintings

titled GO MAN GO and PHARAOH

What explains

Have we coevolved with waste

and are we here

to be its forward vessel

How long until science

admits that we are worthless

except as carriers

Instinctively we nurse it, we pass it

down, we’re done

You Missed a Spot

You Missed a Spot

In movies, a noblewoman is always pointing

her ecru fingernail at a single

unexceptional floorboard, hissing at the servant

girl YOU MISSED A SPOT.

It’s supposed to be a peak humiliation—

the more acute the act of cleaning, the worse.

The more acute the working. The more acute

the ferrying of worth from one colossus to the next.

We’re like bees, just trying to eat,

and in the process conscripted into transport.

Did you hear the snowdrops are having a baby.

We don’t even know what a baby is.

Weekend

Weekend

Some people despise doing laundry, but I don’t

mind it, and I think we can all agree it feels so good

to engage in something you don’t

mind. To have a neutral feeling. My only two childhood

memories are hearing the song EVERYBODY’S WORKING

FOR THE WEEKEND and seeing the bumper

sticker THE LABOR MOVEMENT: THE FOLKS WHO

BROUGHT YOU THE WEEKEND. I gathered

the weekend is the portion of life that is understood

to matter. Now that I’m grown, I know that just means

sex. THE LABOR MOVEMENT: THE FOLKS WHO

BROUGHT YOU SEX. Though of course