Our Andromeda Read Free Page A

Hotel

    At the microphone, suddenly—oh no—
    is Sandra the Available,

    in her endless yellow dress
    and award-winning earrings,

    about to sing Rose Dickey’s unrecorded
    cakewreck of a hybrid poemsong,

    â€œSheep Child o’ Mine.”
    Now watch her win the night

    before it’s all over. She’s no loser
    with a fever but no lover.

    Not like me. I live in a hotel
    with no rooms, just a lobby and lifts

    leading to experiences.
    Time to ask another person,

    someone who’s been outside
    the fishbowl long enough

    to wonder if there will ever again
    be enough water. Rat race,

    hamster wheel, dog run.
    (Okay, dog run’s different.

    It’s not for people.)
    I’m not a real people-person.

    Just like reality is not really realness,
    people. Just try and point out to me

    what’s not fake or paste or false?
    Or trick or replica

    or denial or dream or drama
    or simulation or reenactment

    or knockoff or artificial, a ruse,
    a work of art, illusion,

    a lie, a mistake, fantasy,
    a misconception, missed-connection,

    delusion, hallucination,
    insincere, invalid or invented,

    a rehearsal with no performance?
    A viable world with no excuse to exist?

    In my hotel the sleep is free.
    In any hotel. Why shouldn’t it be?

    And that old girl Sandra?
    Turns out she can really sing.

Outfoxed

    Red foxes are not allowed
    to mate with white foxes
    because the offspring
    would all be female.

    And we can’t have that.
    Blue foxes are not allowed
    to mate with red foxes
    because the offspring

    would all be gay.
    And we can’t have that.
    Brown foxes are not allowed
    to mate with any other foxes

    because the offspring would all
    be, well, brown, in such variety
    and number we’d never know
    what was what anymore.

    And we can’t have that.

    What we can have is affordable
    fox fur, plentiful fox soup,
    invigorating foxhunts
    all brought to you by Fox News.

Inappropriate Dreams

    I can’t tell you
    how often.

    You in the grocery store
    embarrassing

    everyone with
    the lettuce.

    Elsewhere, food
    in the file folders.

    It’s not supposed to
    be there, get it?

    Another time you
    were rolling down a hill

    like a blueberry
    rolling toward

    me, a bear who will
    eat anything

    this time of year
    but wants

    just you. Then
    you are not you but

    the plum of a pebble
    that I skipped

    into the lake
    and found somehow

    night after night.

Products of Perception

    Perhaps an implantation.
    Perhaps there is no soul. And biotech
    metaphysics can’t prove I’m whole.

    If there were clear demarcation
    between
me
and
why me
    then why wine and why whine

    and if so, why not all the time?
    Since flavor is olfactory
    and pleasure in the brain,

    does it make sense for the mouth
    to open and admit blame?
    Fluid body, fluent tongue,

    flu-like symptoms hide a hole
    through which a neutered fever catches
    neutered cold. I’m told a kind of eerie light

    flicks on when mind becomes itself.
    Like when a book is opened,
    and read, or just falls off the shelf.

Miracles

    I spent the whole day
    crying and writing, until
    they became the same,

    as when the planet covers the sun
    with all its might and still
    I can see it, or when one dead

    body gives its heart
    to a name on a list. A match.
    A light. Sailing a signal

    flare behind me for another to find.
    A scratch on the page
    is a supernatural act, one twisting

    fire out of water, blood out of stone.
    We can read us. We are not alone.

Big Game

    after Richard Brautigan’s
    â€œA CandleLion Poem”

    What began as wildfire ends up
    on a candlewick. In reverse,
    it is contained,

    a lion head in a hunter’s den.
    Big Game.

    Bigger than one I played
    with matches and twigs and glass
    in the shade.

    When I was young, there was no sun
    and I was afraid.

    Now, in grownhood, I call the ghost
    to my fragile table, my fleshy supper,
    my tiny flame.

    Not just any old but
the
ghost,
    the last one I will