our evil twins

The evil version of me is auditioning for The Bachelor.
The evil version of me is running for city council
on a platform that features charter schools
and anti-homeless architecture.
The evil version of me is Airbnb’ing his three-bedroom
and setting up a pup tent in the garage.
The evil version of me just bought another labradoodle.

The evil version of you is a life coach, a Christian yogi,
a wellness influencer and a personal brand strategist.
The evil version of you refuses to eat seed oils.
The evil version of you wants to have six children
for all the wrong reasons.
The evil version of you thinks bisexuals aren’t real.

The evil version of me is at Whole Foods,
snitching on attempted shoplifters.
The evil version of you is at the same Whole Foods
intentionally misgendering a cashier.
The evil version of me just met the evil version of you.

Our evil twins are going to Buffalo Wild Wings for their first date.
Our evil twins send each other podcasts on financial independence.
Our evil twins are logging into their joint Facebook account.
Our evil twins are using ChatGPT to write their wedding vows.

Our evil twins have never waited a table or restocked a shelf.
Our evil twins have never overdrafted their bank account.
Our evil twins have never had sex while sober.
Our evil twins have never cried when they weren’t sad or angry.

Our evil twins live in a gated community.
Our evil twins enabled push notifications for their Ring doorbell.
Our evil twins own multiple firearms.
Our evil twins don’t know the names of their neighbors.
To the monsters, we’re the monsters.
Our evil twins are terrified of us.

At the hospital that was a shopping mall

I wait in the former food court to see my dermatologist.
A cell phone dead zone so everyone stares into the
greasy mirror of locked screens. The spectral imprint
of free sample bourbon chicken, an olfactory haunting.
A nurse walks out of the old Hot Topic and calls us back
in pairs, puts us two to an exam room. She confirms
our birth date and coughs directly into our open mouths.

Days pass. The doctor asks us to agree on a single
set of symptoms to avoid confusing the AI transcriptionist.
I hold my fellow patient’s hand as the doctor sprays his
warty knee with liquid nitrogen. There is nothing
for us to do with pain. It’s not “for” anything. My fellow patient
writes me a prescription for a free Subway footlong
with the purchase of any Apple device. A text message
from my insurance company denies the claim I haven’t filed yet.

My 6-8 week follow-up is scheduled for Junetober 51st.
Following the arterial exit pathway past the nursing unit that
was once a Sears, the morgue that was an escape room, the
Starbucks that has always been a Starbucks. One can be
sick and well simultaneously. This is, in fact, the natural
state of things. Outside the pediatric unit that was once
a Build-a-Bear a chain gang of child convicts waits
to have their polio vaccines reversed.

In the empty cavern of the parking garage I press the unlock
button on my key fob and a chorus rises, the immortal screech
of every bat in the elevator shafts, every bird nested in the
skylights, the roaches and mice in the subfloor feasting on the
leavings of private equity strip mining, the black mold
in the ventilation ducts and the severed roots of the pecan grove
beneath the foundation,
all of them singing
in a single voice asking me to
please rate the quality
of the service received,
on a scale of 1-5.

miraculously

Miraculously, no rain.
Miraculously, all of us
woke up today.
Well, definitely not all.
Miraculously, some of us
met the end of our suffering.
To be in a body is to suffer.
But you can’t kiss
and eat Cheez-its
without a mouth,
can you?

Ten of Swords

Location services says
she’s right here in my bedroom,
but I’m lost, wandering
the grooves of my mind
that lead to darkness.
What I want is to violate
the exclusion principle:
to occupy the exact same space
at the exact same time.
What I need is to trust
in the rotation of the earth.

I’ve been walking in shame
experiencing sensation
without feeling, a flux
of information without substance.
Intermingled smells
of food and body.
A YouTube ad asks me:
Did you know there’s a way
you can activate Himalayan salt
so that it melts
all the fat stuck to your skin?
I’m intrigued against my will.

I did what I was told,
and look where it got me:
thumping around like a shoe
in the washing machine.
I keep turning it in my hands
trying to find the right angle,
trying to get a rainbow to come out.
In my dreams I’m rewinding
the footage to overdub
a different answer,
a lie that’s more palatable.
Skimming the surface
of a golden swamp.
Stuck on the vestigial etymology
of the word “rewind.”

What I want is the moon.
What I need is to be my own sun.

If found, please return to:

the place of your birth. Notice new trees, a traffic circle replacing a four-way stop. You’re the same age as the mayor now. Your soccer coach is dead and they named the field in her honor. Pull into the driveway of your childhood home, turning the wheel familiar to avoid scraping your bumper. Observe the odd impulse to knock. Overcome it. As the family dog hobbles toward you, obese and blissful, see recognition in the slow swing of his tail. Walk past your father’s chair (empty), and into the white light and chicken fat of the kitchen.

Look into your original face.
Embrace the only other body you have ever lived in.
And here we are.

And here we are.

The Place For Men

The smell hit me as soon as I stepped into the foyer. Like the inside of an old yardwork sneaker: rich, pungent, human sweat. There were puddles of it in the corners, ringed by the salt left from evaporation. Ahead, a chain-link fence, floor-to-ceiling, glinted in the filtered daylight.

I heard them before I saw them, the squeak and friction of damp skin giving shape to their slowly writhing bodies. Packed so tightly that their breathing was synchronized, a single inbreath rippling tidal across the flesh. All roughly the same height, brown hair, nude, not quite clones but hard to differentiate.

One of them locked eyes with me.

“Breh,” it croaked.

I stared back in horror.
“Breh. Sup.”
Its neighbor turned around.
“Breh!”
“Sup!” the first replied.

Others quickly joined the rising chorus. “Breh. BREEEEH. Sup breh. Sup.” The volume swelled, echoing against the walls of a chamber far deeper and wider than it should have been. There had to be thousands of them, hundreds of thousands ululating, spittle misting the air above their heads, the shuffle of callused feet forward, beginning to thrash against the rusted fence.

I nodded upwards, a quick jerk,
“Sup,” I replied.

The thrashing stopped and they stood,
panting,
silent,
staring.

Sometimes good things happen

(after Garth Greenwell)

In preschool, on the
playground in winter.
I don’t know why I’m here.
Nose running, swingset
chains scalding my palms.

Another child took
my hands into hers,
put them to her mouth,
breathed through her mittens
to keep us both from freezing.

Someone did that for her.
Someone taught her how
to help another body
stay warm. Taught her that
there is no need to endure.

Please forgive me if
I repeat myself.
I really have only
one thing to say,
which is that we are dying
and I love you.

lessons from secret park

What you deserve is a prize
for your unique composition
and salubrious quality.
Recognition for your
mineral effervescence.
Your greatest asset,
however,
is your bafflement.
Your doubt is the air through which
the harp string oscillates.
How dull would life be without confusion?

What I’m hearing is that
you might be afraid
of a little mud.
That’s okay. The earth
is no less eager
to embrace you.
Please imagine your fear
as the peeling layer of birch bark,
feeding the beetles.
Please imagine your fear
as an okra seed,
surviving impossible journeys
to blossom everywhere
only because it is very hard
and very small.

What we deserve,
all of it, the silk and
the cake, the jasmine and
the moonlit swim hole,
everything
spills forth unimpeded.
Please do not take umbrage
at the smell of reptiles,
living and dead.
Please do not let
the coyote trick you
into leaving your home.
At least stick around
until these plums are ripe.
Stay here with me
while the kudzu spills
over us like syrup.

Summer’s comin

Summer’s comin around the corner like
police
looking to whup somebody’s ass.
Summer’s got a Super Soaker
full of hot sauce, an
asphalt trenchcoat. He just ate
the last ice cream sandwich
on earth.

Take solace in vacant lakes
without shadow,
in the largesse
of the double-chocolate cookie.
Find relief
in magnolia blossoms
opening at the mention of your name.
Stand on a balcony
overlooking the ocean
and weep at the material splendor
our violence has generated.

The truth is we don’t know
what any of this is or
why it’s happening.
The other truth is that knowing
wouldn’t help us anyway.

People are dreading it still,
they’re booking flights
to Seattle,
to London of all places. The dog
is packing up and moving
underneath the porch
to sleep in the damp dust. Me,
I’m not going anywhere.
I’m that kid in Neil Young’s
“Powderfinger,”
I’m dumb as dogshit
and I know it
but I’m not afraid
to sweat. A little death,
a little growth.
Get in, loser, we’re
Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

John the Baptist offers unsolicited advice to Jesus on his thirty-third birthday

Listen up.
I’m only a few chapters ahead of you in this book, but lemme tell ya:
it does
not
end
well
for either of us.

Well, nothing ever ends, not really.
But I promise,
it’s going to hurt.
When they braid that crown of thorns,
be thankful you’ve got a head to hang it on.
Circumstances are
a funnel.
A cake, a sieve,
a cloud.
They will separate you into your constituent parts. Turn you into
something else.
A pincushion. A Christmas ornament. An effigy
of the God of Abraham.

The doubt and the pain are more than momentary,
they are the water you walk across.
They are what binds you
to the distant shore.
The surrogate sustenance that fills our lungs until we are born,
they are the medium
of your baptism.

Here’s the good news:
you can stop weighing your worthiness.
You. Are. Ready.
When you turned down that deal in the desert,
you placed a bet on your own infinitude.
So stop asking for permission to enter
and walk straight into the temple.
Audacity is the key that opens every lock, it’s the only reason
these motherfuckers keep getting over on us.
Don’t worry about that, though.
This empire, that empire.
It is impossible to interfere with beauty.

And in the morning, shedding
the cocoon of your burial shroud,
stigmata scabbed over, face still puffy
from crying your eyes out in the garden,
wondering why your father left you,
press the perfumed mug of grief to your skin,
cast worshipful noticing on the landfill of creation,
Love uncritically,
and dance yourself
out of the tomb.