“Wall Street says that cake sales are low”
Or to put it bluntly
“Cake is fizz”

Experience teaches, but its lessons 
may be useless. I could have done without
a few whose only by-product is grief,

I didn’t mean to quit drinking, 
it just sort of happened. 
I’d always assumed 

how can I
ask you to
absolve me

couldn’t stop / himself picking 
his red / lest it
pinken lest / it pale 

as if         you were ever wide-eyed enough to believe in urban legends
as if         these plot elements weren’t the stalest of clichés: the secret lab, the 
        anaerobic chamber, the gloved hand ex machina, the chemical-
        infused fog

For instance, this lushly verdant plain. Imagine it dialed back to featurelessness, each spiraling stalk retracted, each filigree rosette slow-blinking shut.

Give me that! Give me that!
Okay, go and get it.
She fell

The narrow cell contains a bunk,
steel desk mounted on the wall,
toilet, sink, and television;

The house
A frightened face
In the window of another house.