It grows more and more beautiful as it grows

more and more determined to kill you. The surface

area of your skin, the surface area

of any large body of water. And still

we rehearse the equations, we drop our desires

into the fizzy interface

between your earliest longings and

the feeling of a remembered private joy,

of having been released from a regrettable promise

like a baby alligator into the Florida sewers.

Were you trying to impress her, trying to impress

your meaning upon her, trying to press

your body against hers, or all three?

But you’ll never forget how her eyes looked in the shadows

of Nuestro Pueblo. The aesthetic dimensions

of minimarts and motorcades is a topic

quite ripe for investigation, but I wouldn’t

advise that you take it on. I know

your research habits too well. That? Oh,

you can only buy that in the outskirts

of Tokyo, why do you ask? The volume

of air that passes through your lungs in a day,

the number of occurrences of the letter ‘e’

in your average teen paranormal romance novel.

I made one, but then I had to let it go.

I guess it was never really mine, because it didn’t

come back, although it did send me a series

of beautiful postcards. I dedicate this seizure

to you. It’s my best one. Don’t forget to feed it.

Hop into a taxi and say to the driver,

“To the margins! To the interstices, sir!”

and see where that gets you. Look out, here comes

a bullet. Sorry, I meant to say

a bulletin. That’s not so bad, is it?

Except for the fact that it’s worse.