plastic spider rings

here are things i don't believe ever actually work space heaters umbrellas prayer flashlights and Tylenol. here are things i have a hard time getting right brownies in the oven finding someone to make out with doing mail merges at work and getting the key to turn all the way until it clicks when i leave the house. here is something i noticed today the smell of burning dust.

a place on earth

perfume and cigarettes cling

to cloth swayers to the margins crowds

to the next song spilled beer to the wooden

floorboards 

sticky sweaty smoky sweet:

loose gestures, 

tired thighs.

ceasing sleeping

the illuminations of a new day dust
and eyelashes in the crevices
of the letters as i type myself
awake watch steam
turn oatmeal somersaults, long
tumbling between dream and not-dream.

suggestion

dip a paperback book in bathwater dip 

a strawberry in chocolate let 

the dripping edible pages melt

in your mouth become soggy stain

your teeth red give your tongue mushy 

papercuts dissolve the fresh

fruit publishing industry for good.

to sustain a living thing with food

the cream i just poured
into my tomato soup:
still life hurricane.

because one of them held the door for me this morning

I am watching a flock of security guards
in training on the margins of the parking lot. all of their ties
pointing straight black and white down to the ground, taking on
punching mats with their clubs, swaying
quickly before an attack rippling
like the distance through heat waves, the thick glass
of my office windows shot through with their
synchronized cries.

We all lived here quietly together

I was late in an agitated middle of

cars diverted onto First, all of us

driving thinking shit

tapping breaks, gas,

steering wheel waiting for work,

craning. the answer

next morning in a headline: woman fatally stabbed

at bus stop. waiting for work for the morning to continue the day to begin, her life-

the writer said the sister said She loved going out

with her husband and going to the airport,

to watch planes land.

i drive to work picturing a plane's halting landing

Stop.

the writer said the sister said Someone assaulted her. They took everything, and ran.

Relentless teeth

i find ways to keep busy,
feeding the shredder. pretending with the way it looks after:

a paper-crane slaughter
sudden blizzard of murder in the office

opening the tray to stare-
thick interlocked ribbons of prey.