after Josh Bell
Onanism but like coffee without the cream.
My skin yes but also the pointlessness
of our pleasures. In a maple seed’s shape
you have copper and plastic inside of you.
Nothing's growing. I don’t finish.
So, I'm part of this thing where fish learned to walk.
Your first baby pictures look like seahorses.
We stop now to consider our lungs.
Look at all that we have made
and behold it is very good. Otherwise the pale beginnings
would swim to nowhere, gasping
with gills that they do not have
(once, before memory, I made this journey
and found myself
somewhere, slapped
clean and crying with a new soft bottom).
Loneliness. That’s one way of seeing it.
A palm wet with dyings.
