Read an Excerpt
Nature Documentary
The cats do this thing where they sleep
all day in America waiting to be loved
The Big Egg
Woof, mindfulness is exhausting
but the thing is it’s so ineffable
it’s resistant to irony
Mindfulness doesn’t give a fuck
about what you think about mindfulness
That’s the beauty of it, I say
The moon sure is full of itself
Do you ever see a rabbit in it
churning some butter, or
Mindfulness’s indifferent, like the wind
That’s beautiful, he says thoughtfully
and carefully all falls still in the yard
Thank you, I reply
walleyed, I put it in a
romantic poem
I put the moon in most passwords
Romance Language
It’s the endangered language of endangered birds.
High notes neglected by textbook indexes, low notes too.
It’s a whoop and a coo and the trilling of a trumpet all at once.
It’s the sound of the ocean waving its infinite wet handkerchiefs goodbye, goodbye... It’s all the tears the sky has ever cried.
It’s the language between one bell and another bell as they chime the same
song. You can hear the ding of the brass pass across the mossy quadrangle...
It’s written only in ribbons of lemon and orange peel curls.
It’s Jimmy Mack’s explanation for disappearing in the first place. It’s writ in glass rejectamenta down at Dead Horse Bay.
You can piece it back together if you have a thousand odd years.
The instructions are written in... this language.
It’s the language of many-teethed sunflowers’ midsummer chatter.
It’s the language of babbling, dribbling, blubbering, shrubbery, and
bubblegum. Hobby linguists found this language in a cobblestone cubbyhole.
It’s the language of chauffeurs’ idling cars’ doors held ajar in the hot air of the parking lot.
It’s the slow opening of chiffonier and credenza drawers...
It’s the shimmying walls of a canyon refracting an echo of the words echo and I love you, I love you.
It’s the language of mothers and of motherfuckers and it has no gender.
It sounds like it’s important, and it is...
It’s the language of the historical future, after all.
It rolls off the tongue and lands in the mossy quadrangle of the past.
It’s a time traveling language that will outlive the mouth.
It rolls off the tongue into traffic and survives.
It’s a limited edition miracle.
It’s different from coincidence, but eerily similar...
It’s the rare phenomenon of double jinx. / It’s the rare phenomenon of double jinx.
It’s the secret ingredient in a good aurora borealis but shh.
It rolls off the tongue and back up the tongue and you can swallow it whole.
You can swallow it like a vitamin, or a mouse if you’re a hungry snake.
You can pick it up simply by listening. (I love you...)
You can pick it up with your bare hands, just know that this language is heavy.
It’s the language the seashell itself hears.
It’s the language of rustling bushes, hushes, crushes...
It’s the language bad boys teach you after curfew in the
park. As with any other language, learn the curse words first.
You can learn it on a long drive or on a slow train.
You can learn it on a golden gondola gliding through the gloom.
You can learn it in the last room of a large museum.
It’s the wind in winter woods like whew... (I love you...)
It’s the rains that finally arrive, writhing down the mountainside.
Your face flushes when you speak it. You can’t help it...
It ushers new eras. It tickles the ears.
It’s a green mound. It’s a mondegreen.
It flies from the diaphragm lean with ambition.
Miracle-Gro
Gloria instructs me to protect the climbing vine
best I can from the blackberry bush
And my arms tear open like junk mail
from the thorns and I do feel closer to Jesus
however miniature my suffering by comparison
and small the central sliver of our Venn diagram otherwise
A valiant effort is made in the garden
And later a box of new socks and old pears appears in the room
among other goodies from over the mountain
the pears from Argentina
sweet in that distinctively milky pear way
freckled from their marathon journey
You wonder if there exists a pear without freckles
If freckles are punctuation marks in the paragraph of the face
If freckles were among the smallest shrapnel
expelled in the glossy dawn of the universe
What a time to be alive
I wonder unironically aloud to no one
