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A vast someone reappears

with a memorandum of understanding . . .
You dawdle, hem, haw,
find too much air in the sonatina
soundtracking the flights of dirigibles . . .

The rudimentariness of the arrangement
a coherent jumble
the laws of attraction misconstrued
which you insist was OK . . .

What were you thinking? . . .

You make a mad dash for your new hairstyle,
your new look, your new persona,
jotting notes in the margins
translating some obscure writer as if
the time is opportune to think about what
you thought you had wasted, I mean, wanted . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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You audition for the part
parading your naiveté

as freshly-laundered linen sheets
the bed made with dreams of first times
around the block alien -
all perspective
all logic
out the window . . .
Your 180? . . . Inconsistent
and undeniably out of character
but then, perhaps not . . .
The recipient? . . . Conveniently guilt-ridden
(Would do me in!) - 
a placeholder
a stand-in
a once and future insignificant other
the security camera's fuzzy evidence . . .

a TKO in the first round . . .
And the disruption? . . .
Appalling . . . Nothing to be done . . .
You nailed it . . . The part . . .

The opening curtain, though, snagging . . .
The audience, hushed, now whispering,
clearing their throats, shuffling their feet . . .
The unwritten novel of a passion
crumbling, falling away,
replaced, most assuredly, by dry-eyed re-entry
into the world of the living . . .

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That you disfavored substitution was well known

to those who practiced brevity

especially now in light of the upheavals in drag and drop . . .

The joking seemed endless . . .

The trip to the dump . . . a capstone . . .

Word got out and began changing the meaning

of utterances dragged in off the street

as stand-ins for what, no one knew

which was OK since it was something close to music . . .

You complained about a terrible sandwich

carrying on about the avalanche of sandwich boards . . .

a throwback to tamer times . . . with no takeaways . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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You grow invisible hands

worrying the semantics of the morning coffee . . .

wondering whether the alphabet

can handle it . . . invisible hands

shadow-boxing invisible puppets

brought in to engage misfits . . .

then the interruption . . .

the deliberate nonlinearity

of the outer Cape

with its math and models . . .

Do the data fit the model? . . .

Welcoming interruptions . . .

Welcoming the next session's green . . .

Odysseyites mount this hand-me-down thing

on the logic of long haulers

as if Ubers have always been part

of the inner circle . . .

But what about those in the wings? . . .

What are they waiting for? . . .

At the museum you wait for an OK

but the security guards

are more interested in time-off

in the Cy Twombly room . . .

time-off before punching out

of the Cy Twombly room . . .

Did Cy ever take time off

staring at the empty canvas

for three or more hours

before knocking off another masterpiece

in 15 minutes? . . .

The audio-guide says his brain

was crammed with images awaiting release . . .

Emily Hall by Mungo Campbell (click for interview)

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Keep going . . . with the words, I mean . . .

the paper spree boggling the metric

with autofictions-a-plenty

into the facades of north Jersey . . .

Climbing into back seats

searching for the person you were

or the person you wanted to be

as cameras spoke in foreign tongues

with subtitles thrown in

randomly for effect . . .

Knowing what and how much

challenged the cutting room floor

not unlike two roads

diverging in the yellow wood

with blue lip gloss

for the final scene

cookie cutters and all

while a voice from the back room

chimed in with something

about an Aqua Velva Man . . .

You prided yourself a documentarian

but lost altitude between the lines

tailspinning into the chaos

of single room occupancies . . .

Some of it admittedly easy . . .

And here's Ashbery, for example,

late at night in his small,

unprepossessing study

on the ninth floor

of a rental apartment

on the corner of Ninth Avenue

and 22nd Street in Chelsea

grading his poems A B C . . .

Imagine the synaptic activity . . .

Code breakers as oddsmakers

striking poses in stretch limos

called in when the air

was sucked out

and stand-ins began carrying on

about staying after school

for makeup tests making out in cubbies

to that summer's theme escaping

in colorful hot air balloons . . .

Felicity Jones in The Aeronauts (2019)

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Then you would become a sous-chef

slathered with olive oil for the full catastrophe,

keenly aware of the archival method

of posthumous publication

especially when the sommelier

training for the Leadville 100

would take you to the wine cellar

for a peek at his training log . . .

Chaos under the guise of calm reigned . . .

You would reciprocate whenever possible

with quick-study dioramas

and modifications to the soaking tub . . .

The tenor of those days was typically dictated

by the nature of the homework assignment

which as contracted had to be completed

after assuming three of the five yoga poses

emailed in the wee hours . . .

That confusion was always bright

in the hillocks surrounding the lap pool

mattered little . . .

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The daily patdown . . . a costume change

with earbuds, boomboxes tagged and repurposed . . .

Nymphets frolic in the park's pool . . .

Investigative journalists look on for miscues . . .

At Stewart's a septuagenarian, commenting

on your aesthetics, asks about online courses . . .

a cosmic unraveling, harkening back

to that winter afternoon at the manhole

when filled with footnotes

you opted out with a trustee . . .

After shedding his false-face he began pacing

the air . . . you went off-script stammering

eulogies to snowstorms, making an hallucinatory exit

while morphing into a looking glass with fruits

far off and geometric . . .

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I can't go on, I'll go on . . .

          - Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

You begin the day with edits . . .

The incredulous insist on separate checks

tweaking their counterproposal . . .

You know you can do this, yes? . . .

The tomato plants look surprisingly well . . .

The philosophical watering no doubt . . .

The dryer is beginning to react

to the way you crank out words

and feel sure about the bespoked . . .

Walking through the undergrowth

on the way to the firewood lean-to

in dress shoes is reminiscent

of your college biology field trip

when the professor commented

on your fortitude . . . and more . . .

Then the dream of a woman with two kids

running in the passing lane on a highway

and arriving with time to spare . . .

For what, you ask? . . . This happened

and it happened while you were away

only to resurface with black-capped

chickadees and goldfinches

at the tube feeder with two cats

repositioning themselves

and deer looking on from the woods . . .

How many acts in your next one? . . .

Will there be a costume change?

a script change? Of course there's never

enough time to go on with the makeover . . .

A pint sounds like a plan . . .

Craig McDean

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And here despite the opening credits

is the turnkey scene

with all gathered 'round for takeaways

from the beloved soon-to-expire . . .

takeaways to clutter the walkups

of your immunocompromised self . . .

Cue up The Last Station

for Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's spin

on what matters

when it all begins grinding to a halt

with a drizzle of rice vinegar . . .

Turn the page, please . . .

A bear walks into a bar on a dog day afternoon . . .

Again, please . . .

Life out of balance . . .

OK, field notes wither you . . .

You'd think they were the only ones . . .

How about a pop-up pastoral with odysseyites

waist-deep in knee-jerk conceits

dropping PEZ with the intensity of slam dunks

while sampling craft beer à la carte? . . .

You're right to worry the absence of joviality . . .

The countdown, then . . .

How about that? . . .

Is that enough? . . .

Is it enough to parse

the short attention span of Youtubers

while your double traces your moment(um)

sitting at home on a yoga mat

fingering designer beads

the requisite number of times? . . .

The book escapes your late night hands

and rewrites itself to mirror the dystopia du jour . . .

Time is running out . . .

And not because of nothing either . . .

Mirjana Grasser