From Issue 4.3 Real Materials.

But hey,
I’ve only been
talking about myself.

Wildfire sunset
winding its melody
around my lungs.

I’ve started 
laying down grass seed
in my yard
because its slow
desertification
is too pointed a metaphor
to deal with every day.

Though I don’t know
what I’m doing,
so I’m sure the birds
will eat up 
all that seed.

At least
there’ll be
more birds around.

A little bribe
to tempt them
back into the system.

An ad on YouTube:
a worry that your comfort zone
has gotten too comfortable.

You make something,
then it hardens
and everything else
disciplines.

This May 25th,
let’s all celebrate
Rent Increase Day.

A sure sign
you’ve lived somewhere
a little too long.

Though it’s tough
to put down roots
with no one around
to set up the sprinkler.

I’m too invested
in this clover patch
because there’s got
to be a four-leaved one
in there somewhere.

Soon this desert
will be your
desert.

As the streets fill
with wildfire smoke,
the N95s come out.

Every time
the smoke drifts in,
write it into the poem.

Again
with the Blade Runner
comparisons.

The Instagram shot
of the sun peeking
through orange.

Disaster brings out
some hardcore scolding
and I’m just as guilty
as anyone else,
I guess.

I am so tired
of being 
told I need 
to unlearn things
and I wonder when
the structural conditions
are going to unlearn something.

Instead,
why are we 
so afraid
of duration?

Why
are we so
afraid
of duration?

Time
and its discontents
in the eternal present.

Something something
teleological inevitability.

Like a planet-sized
cat
on my chest.

The hubris needed 
to hold things
in place.

And listen,
I don’t think you get
how important
it’s been for me
that the grass I planted
is now poking through
the dirt, so
I’m going to insist
you think long and hard
about how much sincerity
you think I’ve invested
into this poem.

That’s a week
at home
watering the lawn
two or three times a day.

The stubborn ache
in my right elbow.

Something like
forever?

And in forever,
the event stops
being a crisis
to swallow us whole.

Air raid siren
as a form
of care?

Boarding up windows
as a form
of maintenance?

The clover
attracting pollinators.

New shoes
cut up my heel.

Walking
at the same pace
as the Amazon courier
is delivering packages.

Shift change
at the retirement home.

102 names
on the mayoral ballot.

Haze
on the weather app.

Breathing
is such a boring metaphor
for time.

But here we are
setting records
for hottest day in history
and then breaking those records
the next day.

The overwhelming joy
of the line
going up.