[sewer water never smelled so sweet]

The patch of poison ivy where I smoked my first cigarette
I don’t think I ever told you,
but you sense
the railroad bridge and stream
are special so you dip your bare
feet in sewer water, crawl
along spiny branches
stripped of leaves by careless
hands holding on

We are better than these unknown predecessors
all we need is whispering
moss under curled toes
like rows + rows
of cream corn
courage
& shit soaked french fries

*

the wildflower on the bridge stares at me now
I am more
afraid of spiders than its little burrs    I am less
of everything, less
likely to bare-knuckle catch
air & squeeze out its
ache like firefly juice
let some sort of false incandescence illuminate my wrinkles
everybody has it
I just have nothing more to offer once i smear this sweet
nectar across the tip of your nose                   apparent, possession
diminuendo in the cramp between brows
diminuendo my brows
places everyone, places, let’s get
on with it. You’ll rot in the bathtub
if anyone lets you but I feel like a piece of    glue
when I sit still all those porch lamps
obstruct goldenrod
for which we were never
necessarily searching

*

I am just anger i am just anger i am just
I’m going to bed I say

write me something pretty before you fall
asleep you say
i don’t, I

say, you
say it like that
blank concrete slab
that empty yellow
drainage pipe

its train-horn
dullness

One day as a young pope, Popemodernist spotted a split ear of corn in the dirt. Two halves still smoking. The fruit of my labor is empty, they thought, watching smoke curl from the spongy mass. So they left the church. But there are still questions.

Popemodernist is one such question, asked in answer, dissonant, crossing arbitrary lines of genre, gender, and medium, hopefully a spooky diversion for y’all, hopefully not taking themself Too Seriously, etc.