Why should I want to return
to a time where even when I occupied that time

A tiny blemish where the sun-
glasses touch his cheek. It will fade.
From the corner of each eye, uneven notches

My mother’s been dead for three months.
I don’t know where she is now or how she got there.
I’ve heard all kinds of conjecture, and some
I believe. But firsthand experience comes last.

I understand—the NO ONE CARES billboard
looms over the exit ramp; Nancy has lost her place
in her novel for the umpteenth time; the Lab
has dysplasia.

Flags snap inland as the water scales. Try again.
The ocean’s scales point toward shore

Up till three reading zombie
comic books, I wake to video- 
game first-person shooters

My grandmother had eight children,
one of them twice.

The first Olga lived
a mere month,

succeeded by my mother,
the second Olga,

In Regent’s Park the cleanup’s incomplete.
Though weeks have passed, it seems it’s still occurring.
You drive. We talk. Ambition is a theme.

I predict, like the one who was sucked to sea 
and returned in an Arabian container ship, 
all small worlds will be dashed and drowned. 

We trapped him—
the dignified male
with the graceful neck—