You and I, when we sleep, we’re like whales
because fish swim out of my mouth
and you dishevel the seaweed.

Whoso list to hunt it with a camera?
The Carolina parrot is extinct.
Hunted to nothing emerald.

Obviously, it’s a category I’ve been made aware of
        from time to time.

That rusting water tower collapsing
on its ruin was the movie theater
where you sat in smoky consternation

If a lone feather fell from the sky,
like a paper plane wafting down
from a tree house where a quiet boy

Precisely this
        afflicts the plagiarist,
or something like

Putting my lenses in, I see No Man’s Land in the mirror—
Which makes me think of times in Tokyo so long ago 
When, on some subway station platform, in a crowd,

We have all been there once. Some, more than that.
They forced us all to visit one September.
But that was such a long, long time ago.

My brain had been swiped clean.
I couldn’t love
songs I loved; friends came

Beasts
At the threshold
Rats