Picket Monsters (audio only)
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A family spots their brother sleepwalking
in a narrow hallway. He is cooking in his dreams,
pretending chef, moving around a kitchen,
screaming humbug at dried bits
of onion powder in a spice container, and so
takes off to the grocery store,
As a child I wanted as many letters
in my bloodstream as the planet Mercury
would allow and so traveled the city
on buses late afternoons and read all the billboards
high above the streets and byways,
on sides of factories and churches and never
heard the sermons of the displaced
Let me begin again as a quiet thought
in the shape of a shell slowly examined
by a brown child on a beach at dawn
straining to see their future. Let me begin
this time knowing the drumming in my dreams
is me inheriting the earth, is morning
lighting up the rivers. Let me burn