the 0^th collection

eating ceiling

the ceiling,
how do i put this?
well, the ceiling—it’s falling.
no, not like that—
it’s crumbling, it’s
reality stretching at its seams,
testing,
the limits of the sky that you,
in your foolish wisdom,
(or maybe absolute hope)
promise isn’t falling.
one last thing—
i think i might have eaten some of it?

mantra of the free world

the mantra of the free world—
speech is the muscle
with which you claim
your freedom; language
is soon the vessel of change—speak,
lay down your grievance; watch
the bustle of the hive mind wrestle
with the evidence you have brought
to the attention of the court.

and we are told to
paint our pain
into decadent chocolate fudge
melting in our hands, to
offer up honeycomb and hope
to be heard over the drone
of the prosecutor.

i choke on non-existent words,
on the sickly sugar scent
seeping through my skin.

mutability

when the gorgon, fair medusa, figures i’m done
frolicking about, she places my plaything in the kiln,
leaving my childish fingerprints dancing on its surface—

and there, it carries a heavy-boned
permanence—stone-locked
and pock-marked, it lives

with the clarity of the slick-silver blade
of a systematically sharpened pocketknife,
meant not for touching, but for looking—

for gazing at my own ghostly reflection in the glassy surface.

dosage

i.
you wonder, at first
why the water has taken on a
murky, purple color today.

but no matter.
perhaps the fish have kicked up the sand, maybe
they got caught in circles

like army ants following
their sisters following
themselves
until they die from exhaustion.

ii.
one,
haunted by a sickle-shaped scar,
swims into my cupped hands.

i want to believe,
as does everyone,
that she merely scraped her scales on a
a sleepy night swim, but

it’s only a scalpel,
drawn in a precise crescent arc,
that could make that kind of wound.

iii.
an uncanny rainbow shimmer
dresses the surface—
mesmerizing, until the
water is littered with fish bodies.

you wouldn’t think they were dead, except that
when you reach out to touch them,
they don’t flinch—
you do.

slow poisons
are the ones you should be afraid of.