here's where i asked for modernity

Here’s where I asked for modernity and was handed a damp tuna sandwich in a zip lock bag:


The next time I hear the sound of paper crinkling I’ll have moved away and failed an IQ test. I’ve just remembered a bathroom cabinet where I tucked a glass jar of cigarette ash beneath a stack of unused bath towels—a button in the coat of Massachusetts, & very little time—

a marble statue of an elephant, Ganesha, lord of obstacles. If I am trying to trick you then don’t eat the cheese. This red hat is my favorite American product & it does it matter if I meant it— the severed goat’s hoof is a real hoof or a fake hoof— but the severed goat’s hoof is also an ashtray.

I watched her as she leaned to blow pot smoke into the ear of a dog. Eventually, the dog moved away— it was her sister’s dog anyway.

The other day we met within six feet of a fountain & we were drinking coffee. You held a piece of chocolate cake—said it wasn’t from Costco but it used to be.

I said There’s this guy I can never remember who was afraid he’d be buried alive— he wore bells on both his shoes and he had bells rigged in his coffin. He’d been a scientist, maybe, a history book type—

And you tried to remember his name with your eyes closed so I thought maybe we were in love
but I was wondering why I’d thought of death, then, too.