ELEVENSES

9

This is
my favorite
number

Is it common to become
weary over the worry
of glut, the way it so readily

becomes need?

I do laundry
get a haircut
make coffee
pet the cat

and obtain an active sort

of boredom, for it is abhorrent
to me to know
beforehand what a thing is

to become. The unconscious

is not incautious

Laundry
Haircut
Coffee
Cat

10

The silence of Marcel
Duchamp is overrated

The forms of farms are far
from exhausted

The suitcases in the tunnel
on the way to the 4 train bob
like the heads of birds

and a transient
serenades himself in the keyed
gleam of the advertisement

If you recognize the flower’s use
as a Geiger counter

you no longer look
down upon its seeming

simplicity

Books yaw atop
the green nightstand
but I won’t

tell you their names


Okay, just one: Silence

11

A word is to me

like a button

potentializing

a handful of noise

(let me say it more directly)

A word is to me

various and becoming

(no, more directly)

A word is to me

toward

12

Elevenses is

a word, as

is February

warbling trapezoids
stalk the stoop-ridden

periphery for warmth

The stubble of winter razors
zero forth. I feel more

comfortable amongst the indefinite
articles. I feel no
relief in the parentheses

dictated by men. When I was a child
I wrote body is where
the knowledge comes from