potato who replaced him was also from Idaho.
They’d traveled far to let my imagination put words in their lack of mouths.
Later, when I had money, I’d carry a hundred dollars in my underwear.
It seemed a fortune, and the idea of a fortune kept me warm.
When you’re poor, you never stop being poor.
When you’re a potato, you never stop smelling like dirt.
Scared of the dark, I’d hold the aroma of earth to my nose
and think of Mr. Potato Head in the night of the ground.
If he survived, so could I.
If people called the gross knobs that grew out of him eyes,
I was free to believe whatever I wanted.
This is how I learned to fly.
Postcard
Looking at a bird.
Looking at the moon.
Looking at a bird looking at the moon.
Sharing a cigarette with the trees
outside my hotel room.
Waiting for Pegasus.
Standing in my socks.
Finding a yellow knife in my coat pocket
that doesn’t belong to me.
Stabbing a beer can.
Dropping the knife in the trash.
Wondering what kind of bird sings
for a man waiting for a horse that flies.
Wishing I’d taken more acid when I was young.
Imagining myself in armor in the pool
reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being
as children a thousand years from irony
competitively splash each other
for the prize of shouting I Am the King.
Never be the king,
I whisper from behind my faceplate.
Everything is happening at the same time.
You are here and I’m in your bedroom
looking at your slippers.
Why yellow? Why open-toe?
There are only surprises,
including how little I understand.
My head is on fire and I think
it’s because I have a woodstove
for a soul when the truth is
fire has to be somewhere,
I have to be somewhere,
everywhere has to be somewhere:
why not here?
Refraction
In Alaska the sun had insomnia:
I chased a rainbow at midnight
south of nowhere in a rental car,
having lost my favorite cap.
As fast as I went, the rainbow went.
As awake as I was, the sky never blinked.
As much trouble as I have
being around people, Alaska agrees:
Alaska gives humans the cold shoulder,
the frozen river, the scary bear.
I love that Alaska wants to be alone, too.
For hours, the world was empty
of McDonald’s, lawn mowers, For Sale signs,
capitalism; it was like looking in a mirror
that ignored my face, that saw
where I really came from, that stared back
at the savanna inside my bones.
I pulled over and built a house
of my affection: I would live there
with distance and mountains
and the intelligence of rainbows,
who are smart to be untouchable.
If we caught them, we’d put them in zoos,
cut them open, try to civilize them,
teach them French, teach them war.
I pulled over, sat on the hood
and leaned into the air
with my capless and bald head,
the bite of it, the hello of it,
and decided to stand taller within myself,
like a swing set or giraffe.
I’ve driven along fracked fields,
where mountains have been scalped
and refineries channel apocalypse
with their forests of pipes, their fire
and smoke,
and while some places make me eager
for lobotomy, Alaska
makes me want to be better, think better,
do better: to fit in. Not that I know
what that is or means. Not that we can.
Just that we better. Just that we must.
Inside job
He talks more than a river.
Louder than a gun
