Go, little book, to her, where I can't enter
and serve as her doorjamb, or bookshelf prop, or coaster
or a clean spot on the floor for her to drop

her T-shirts or negligee (forbidden!), or be that place
where she can indolently tuck her billets-doux
that accumulate, and she pushes them aside irresponsibly

to look at maybe when she gets moderately loaded
on warm fall evenings. Suggest to her then
the advantages of having done with being a lover

and the small claim that entails on the other's attention—
how you become the other of an other, how corners
grow eyes, phone calls smart, how one minute you burn, the next

you're gelatinous as cold spaghetti. She is young
and subject to crushes; go, pervy book, and say how often
her breasts crush against the bodies of newish lovers,

place my lines in her ears at moments of passion
like children's prayers simulating formica—bright little desires
stuck to a matrix in which they're entirely foreign—

and inflect her basically ardent, genteel nature
with a careful pity for my situation
where phenomena struggle but I'm not allowed to answer,

but want to, then can't, then feel empty
as a disused sports center. Then be convivial, speak casually
and tell how the vocative is a legitimate grammatical function,

how she should call, or call out, and perhaps one time I'll come over
to analyze her poems or something equally unsexy, cerebral.
Remind her that words are Persians, freeing Hebrews

while baiting Greeks, and that what a lover says to
a lover (anywhere, at any time) should be written on wind,
on water. Be talisman of my absent glamour, a pretty synecdoche

for me. Don't tell how I comport myself at orgies
with the stateliness of a dowager, how frequently in love I resemble
a lapsed blog or a model train enthusiast. Speak if you have to just nonsense
 
to prolong communication, be of ice trays and weather
or kitchen implements, minutiae seldom thought of as romantic
but in a song this slender

enough to keep it from ending,
delaying that point where I have to go home and remember
she's there, I'm here, deep in Thai donut

shop radio stutter, reminding the crullers
of carmen et error, the dull irk of distance,
how gorgeous once seemed even loam.

 

I take it on faith we know more about our world
to monitor the plume that got into the burn plan
delivered in the form of whatever we were feeling
when we made our decision to live here—
      Mr. Chairman, I think you should call the Governor
and tell him what we know.

We know the event had a significant effect upon Shiva
persons on the ground inhaled it,
breathed in at least some of it. Depending on where you are
     you can almost see the plume
once we know more we can predict where the plume will drift
in one case we studied the plume

See how every spore or larva you've encountered
     you breathe it, it just melts
but you need to inhale a huge number
under special conditions. Just watch Clark,
     joint to his mouth, watch Clark's eyes
how now that he's seen it that one way, he doesn't want to die

And we're, you know, not reliable that way
     just lift the
I mean, you just inhaled a ton of chemicals
but we both know you don't look anything like a gay porn star
if it's in that form and inhaled from a burning source
   it just might be your eyes

And you hear stories from people saying well "We just can't breathe
in this town after a Nato bombing." Well, we don't know
   what they are breathing in. I know what effect
   my smoking is having on you, and I enjoy it.
Aerosols are volatile: you have to wonder how much the people in New
Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado ever knew

Used to be it hid what they were doing
  if you know anything about depleted uranium
      you know how to think of sleep
but you have to figure the residents didn't know that already
   because delivered as a mist it looks smaller
   because it is out there it has to be destroyed