Poems and Photography

I cut up the White House today,

pasting bits of the ceiling there

besides the folds and other

advertisements. And though

I did not read the pamphlet

yet, traveling across state lines, 

with a card in quadrants littered

by vacancies and absence, 

this making of space bought

back a tactile chance in joy now

& again. When last in the house,

below the corner opening, I 

would sign in creases sent 

into the air towards anyone—

The numbers of a body

politic increase as

non-language of any

statistics speak any 

correlation between 5G &

COVID or Cage films & sharks. 

I’ve read your constellation 

of major league base-bubbles

& the affect in my power 

grid, I lost my words 

in a paper bag with one cat 

& nine-symmetrical lies

at the top of the twisted stair

case. Capital hill begins with S

for surveyed land. That these 

complicate geographies enumerate 

government property 

floating through servers in

Canada leaves a residue 

not unlike the taste of our own 

semi-baked conspiracy. 

The leaves already cast 

their outlines in arms above 

the house—bony bogus,

you might say, these spooky 

figures vanished in the cul-de-sac

when I rolled my stomach against 

itself, wondering how something 

intimate could become inanimate.

Circling back, that old suit you called 

cats and often landed mistakenly 

named crept through the hallway, 

a stalking viewpoint from behind full 

circles. Skeletal impressions in blue

and the scariest thing under the bed

tucked in the underbelly of drawn maps

and day jobs no less important than 

a map makers’ strategy (hollow 

in the dark night, painted tigers

beneath the mirrored trees.