Philadelphia Raygun

Pigeons bubble around the popcorn lady's feet.

We know the dead are for sale. They smile haphazardly.

Some people were never meant to be children but a

 special kind of childproof brick. What were you hoping to learn?
My brain is a terrorist bomb 
exploding silently every hour.

Brief Interviews with Forgotten Underwear Models

She had a face like boiling milk, according to her principal biographers, Briggs & Stratton. She once said, I’m not the type to dissolve into a handful of asterisks tossed over some man’s bed. She once said, You’ll never find me combing the grass blades of any lawn in a northwesterly direction. On the outskirts of the small Tennessee town where she was born & raised, there’s still a gas pump dedicated to her memory. One day, we’ll all eat teriyaki on the beach without despair as the sky unrolls above us like a clean blue papyrus. She points to a blank spot in the distance and says wistfully, I used to be a hieroglyphic there once.

A Few Lines Written While Drowning

There were always 4 or 5 things she couldn’t let into the house alive. He looked out from the window of the aquarium across the street. There was a decent chance he might reach someone with a good blast of a rifle. Instead, he was forced, with one fish, to see into the very depths of her blue eyes. He was playing the game to win on the tip of her tongue. He’d had enough of defeat, but he was still standing, right out in the open under the nearest streetlamp, surprised as anyone, white as a pelican.

Amusing Stories from the Casket Company

You came to the house to kill me or to give me a porpoise,

it’s not clear, but something’s gone awry, and you invite me to a party instead. It seems that in some other life, a life adjacent to this one, I stole your wife. But it’s hazy, like a butterfly in another language. You offer to translate. Death smells really bad, you say, like that kid from first grade. But he can’t help it. He doesn’t know any better. 
It’s really his parent’s fault.

They aren’t looking after him properly.

Cheese is melting on the counter. It’s sunset, after all, somewhere over there; you can hear the chain pulling it down. There’s time for one more before you go. We’re exchanging symbolic lions at the door, that ancient ritual we’ve both forgotten & don’t even realize we’re re-enacting. A man comes down the stairs neither of us recognizes. We stare at each other questioningly as he folds us both up 
like a couple of identical shirts.

He’s going on a business trip to Sioux Falls. 
We’re going with him. 
The taxi is already at the curb,
the meter running. 

So Long as this Department Store Showroom is Moving Through Apocalypse Like a Spaceship Everything’s A-OK

Aisle 7 was a shocking pink commentary on late capitalism

delivered by a baboon in polka-dotted underpants.

It was fake news at its best,

clownish & sincere.

It even won an award from the Society for the Prevention of Deep Breathing.

This time, according to the newsreel,

they hadn’t bombed the munchkins into smithereens

but buried them in tons of plastic toy trash

from Disney & their competitors.

It was a great advertisement for the cartoon

that genocidal breakfasts had become.

No one will ever forget the image

of the Virgin Mary

clutching the limp body of her stuffed teddy

crucified for the sins of the good folk at Campbell’s Soup.

The sorrow went on forever & ever

but we tied on our aprons & made hot chocolate.

It was the American Way, or some way,

for those who’d lost their way.

This time we were resolved not to hear our parents calling not realizing

that our parents had resolved not to call.

This time there were too many leftover people named

Fred who’d never been elected president

of anything.

Life is like a camera

without film that you left in a closet

that has been carried off by camels.

Besides, you moved a long time ago.

If you don’t accept Hello Kitty as your personal savior

you don’t stand a chance of salvation.

And that’s not just my opinion.

It’s written in the directions of the new Gulf War

edition of Monopoly.

Check the fine print

if it hasn’t already leapt off the page

 & into your bed

colonizing your brand new mattress

like an old coonhound.

January 14

Tonight, for dinner, we baked a pizza

topped with the theoretical exhalation of wrens 

& the screams

of children on a merry-go-round.

We watched a game

where two teams of men on giraffe-back

furiously attempted to erase each other

from each other’s sight.

I kissed you a thousand times fewer than I intended.

& you didn’t strangle me lovingly

as I always dreamed you might.

Still, I sat on your lap as if it were a seat

accidentally ejected from the cockpit of a plane.

And I fell to earth

never once concerning myself

with whether or not the chute would open.

Its necessary to maintain a state of disobedience against everything. Said Alice Notley.