what i really did while earning my mfa

second floor apartment on thayer and waterman. providence. island of roads. clickclacking on corona skyblue typewriter on cloudy paper stretched across the sky. one liners. and every line

one-liner must has a perfect partner. these are poole’s rules. an unending parade of left feet followed by rights. of humans pairing off with fingers clasped into hands. 2gether. and each

couplet has a number. one for each day. the vision is 365. that’s all i have to do. besides humping groceries from the market saturday mornings in my north face backpack. and working

providence journal nights stacking plasticwrapped bundles of cosssectioned papers riding conveyer belts like some chaplain amusement park for dementia. and doing my wash on high

street saving quarters and waiting as my levi’s spin behind soapy glass and the world spins

below at 33,000 miles per second and straggled strangers white knuckle the counters

in hiking boots and a meal is ramen noodles. or grilled cheese with dill pickle. or plain yogurt and trail mix. and if skimp even more on food i could buy that bolan tanx album in the window

of the vinyl shoppe on friday or maybe chuck berry in lousiana it’s only three stars says rolling stone but it’s the grit of a man after the fall busted for trafficking an underage girl across

mississipi state lines and right now the needle is out of grooves and side a of heroes is clicking over and it’s just pop. pop. pop. but needles are made of diamonds. so i’m okay until i nail

together a last word in this second line after dinosaurs became extinct. something about erasers. and cereal box prizes. but i’m stuck. but i’ll wait twenty-five years for a match.

so i hit the copy store and spend three bucks for thirty and that’s when you might see me stapling pages to telephone poles. trying to send you a message across time. and i do this at

night under the occasional street light. hunched over and blurry with an eye filled with flies. like those satellites we have right now somnambulating under pluto. and i wonder if my

poems are someday fireworks launched into nothingness. or if my words will someday drip downoutoverinside slowly, white smoke against the moonless sky of your cranium.

take a long february outside exhale. then another staple. and everyone would know me for a while. and that’s what this is all about. at least that’s what i believed then. yes. dinosaurs

became extinct. because they were used like erasers. because time erases. because they were selfish. blah. because they didn’t learn how to juggle. because they didn’t see it coming. matches,

light fuse:

boom.