Levitation For Agnostics

Do not attempt to meditate

do not under any circumstances

assume the lotus position

do not try to suspend disbelief

no matter that you no longer

disbelieve in suspension

disbelief is your friend

do not try to focus

all of your physical and mental

energy in the vicinity of

your third eye

any fool can tell you

you do not have

three eyes

or the God-given ability

to pick the winning ticket

everything that happens

happens

simple as that

do not therefore be surprised

should you find yourself

floating ever so slightly

in the grocery store

parking lot even with

an armful of arugula

weighing you down

you are not exceptional

you are not alone

this is all you need to know

until it isn’t

published in The Georgetown Review

Aftermath

                        for Takeshi Moro

The worst that can happen

has already happened

also the best

which we tend to forget

the spaces separating

the stones in the creek bed

are growing infinitesimally

larger and birdsong

intervals which ordinarily

we do not pay any

attention to have been

lengthening making even

the least finch a little

nervous a little

self conscious there is

something that seems to

call for an apology

at the beginning and the end

of the day although

to whom and for what

I would never try to say

as for me I am still in love

with all that I have lost

am still losing

I would sign up

to lose it all again

in an afterlife if only

the universe were not expanding

but contracting into something

more hilarious more reasonable

more sequential

time is not our enemy

as we previously might have

suspected we have millennia yet

left to consider just what

wants not to be said

published in Oberon

Interrogation

What do you believe in?

Who said I believe in anything?

Who are your accomplices?

You. You are my accomplices.

What were you planning next?

I don’t make plans.

Who is giving you orders?

No one is able to give me orders.

Where did you learn to blow things up?

On television.

What programs do you watch?

I don’t watch television.

What do your parents think of what you have done?

They are not my parents.

Have you been in touch with any foreign groups?

Yes, I am in touch with all foreign groups.

What did you hope to accomplish?

I was hoping to wake up.

And did you? Did you wake up?

Now I am hoping to go back to sleep.

When you are sleeping are we safe?

No, but when you are sleeping I am safe.

What should we do next?

I don’t know. What do you believe in?

published in The Massachusetts Review

Arshile Gorky In Las Vegas

You painted Las Vegas before it ever existed.

I bet you never thought anyone would take

abstract expressionism so literally. Such

gaudy fantasies taken to impossible extremes

by no taste and money. It’s your kind of town.

Why else would your self-portrait end up in

The Guggenheim Gallery located just off the

reception lobby of the Venetian Hotel?

You don’t look happy it must be said. You

look like someone contemplating suicide.

But the colors are compelling in that

forthright manner of yours. The utterly

convincing unexpected choice. Like the canals

of Venice on the second mezzanine level

pyramids pirate ships New York Paris Donald Trump.

Recursion

 All the best unskipped smooth flat round stones

have already been skipped by the early morning

walkers or else peed on ecstatically

by their dogs, creating needless difficulty

in the search for perfect rocks to fling back

in the general direction of Chicago.

You can teach someone to skip stones as easily

as you can teach writing poetry,

both requiring an insatiable appetite

for failure. Like many other recondite

disciplines – Chinese calligraphy, stiff egg whites,

sexual pleasure – it’s all in the wrist.

For all its breadth and weight, the lake apparently

needs us to deliver its mineral children for further

pedagogy. All its rocks still have

something to learn about roundedness, about

eternity. Stones may never dance

and poems may never float, but every teacher knows

that year after year what may not be learned

must all the same be taught.

published in The Sow's Ear Review