Stylized Facts

Now I can’t

get past the mezzanine,

never know who’s waiting

for me downstairs

by the revolving door

covered in shields or crosses

like the blood drive. Will this

be the year they finally succeed

in harvesting these last

self-organs, I ask, as they

tell me it’s for a cause?

As if I’m not the swollen one

smiling on their pamphlets.

Don’t bother with this logic

of sameness as you eye me

like the platter at labor lunch.

I used to envy the trees

wearing mists as veils,

modest trunks exploding into

thousands of muscle-bound

legs soon as they reach

the soil. Now even trees

seem docile and susceptible.

So too for the quasi-

goddesses with half-lives

shorter than a hair’s.

When we still had hair

and partners my partner

shaving said hair said

we should be made of light.

While every morning I

wake hoping to uncover

some slab of my body

hollowed out and encased

in steel. Everyone’s entitled

to her own magic bullet

theory of self. There’s

the get-to-know-you

game we play no longer

for we lost get-to and know-you.

If you had to press further into

the future in what county what

province would you elect

what version of what self?

A half-frozen field late

January. Tall, spare, lone

turbine thrashing by

the abandoned interstate.

I play my game.

I await the next campaign.