Warm Water

by Rob Rice

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jazz drummers are in the business of letting us know

exactly how many right nows there are per second

 

creased at the eyes

face like a book

dog-eared anthology of dense smiles

 

how satisfying it would be to rip

a medium sized tree out of the ground

 

if you were a giant

 

i know you’d liberate

the little breath trapped there

 

is the city like a chandelier

arms folding like a thin fingered fist

in maybe by magnet

like

a hanging spider’s legs

that gather miserably around

the caught can for a hopeful second

be interpreted as loving

 

in a way it is

 

a surprise then

affirmations of sadness

like yeah

right

this is experience

personality

study it

 

shop thought talk of the dead

isn’t qualified

but definitely

they can sleep anywhere

if they’re depressed enough

 

electrical energy amassed

enough in the shoulders

to critically ablate a brain tumor Veins lit through skin

filaments that take a second to blink away go

migraine grey

as an afterthought

 

impression

 

our whole culture is driven

by that shit

it used to be

a small town

 

thing

 

the statistics

will

anyway

negotiate this

 

people enjoying the company of their dogs

say off hand

we need to add minutes between the hours

 

that’s their plan

to get away with it