The Next Thing You Know

Everything, its own invention, happens eventually, although sometimes not at all: the music of fog, cannibal piñata, razor blade hula hoops. Have you noticed that if you talk about time, it slows? If you talk about love, it stops? Today, in Mecca, it’s 109 and raining arithmetic bees. The sky has gone too far. Clocks are machines for the manufacture of moments. Time is its own décor. I wonder what color I should paint the red ant farm? As the smoke clears, my body is riddled with PowerPoint bullets. Fortunately, I’m never hungry, because I’m food. Loving you is like chewing bees to get honey. The newspaper reads itself and begins sobbing uncontrollably. I’m happy that I am a room all to myself. I leave things to chance; nothing is ever my fault. Sometimes it’s particles, sometimes waves. Beneath the striped fur of the tiger, the skin, too, is striped.


Appeared at Camroc Press Review, 2013