From Things to Do in Hell, a poetry collection, which will be published next month by Coffee House Press.

The airplane inside us was running out of pretzels

We took the drugs in the morning so we could see at night

All day clinging to ghastly seaweed on the naked internet ocean

We thought, okay, neglect equals geography

As our habits grew unrecognizable so far from the strobe

And cold menace of a quivering if

What I didn’t say was I was worried you might think

I was fine but insufficient

A total dick with wet cuffs like Zebulon Pike

In the vacuum of night

I can almost smell all these leases expire

Leashes?

Softening in the efflorescent decay tenure

And crippled in near-attainment

But less here already

We sipped unlegislated self-light like half-sour breast milk

Midlife is a drop ceiling

The future like a lake of cooling bacon fat

Computers do it for us anyways

Unless we tell them not to

Which we won’t