Child, You May Already Be Plugged In To the Psychic

gloop of this universe, or covered in peachfuzz.

You may already have the authority

to say most of this world is

confusing as a mixtape from a cannibal spider

who floats invisible threads into your ear.

You can whisper into every part of the ear.

But what’s true is not true

all throughout this great gasmask

of a country. Sometimes it will be like trying

to hear a videotape with a screwdriver.

Sometimes you will be hell-eyed

in the eternity of a photograph, occupied territory

blooming behind you. Child,

listen. Before you were anything

we drove to North Carolina to clean the house

of an uncle recently dead & came back

with rugs, records, things we had to think of

as ours, soon—soon—

yours. Home, we found our shoes

had all molded. Mold on the jackets of books,

green-brown spots between pages, splattered

through scarves & coats. Kudzu had climbed

up the walls. Through the window,

small green fingers. We opened

all the windows, we welcomed this.

The only thing that can kill it is light.

Rendition

The blue button in a terminal

where my loan died:

Enter your success story.

This they is back

to reconnoiter, to stake claim. The polystyrene

I am of data

splattered in an alley.

Nothing forever except these crumbs

of insulating foam crushed into cubes which outlive me

& all these poems. I teach

each paragraph like Aristotle consider dispute,

this is how anecdote

gives a life its capital.

A story is like oil

leeched from a beet,

or a body. It accretes.

It is my years

accredited & crude.