TELEVISION

Before the year ended, I thought 

of all the television we watched. 

The election and ancient Syrian 

artifacts made by aliens, the castles 

that people made their lives in, 

lives big enough to warrant backyard 

mazes and library reading rooms. 

I stare hungrily, the screen blinking 

swinging its pendulum of blue light. 

So often I hated the television, 

for its incompetence, how willing I am 

to receive incompetence, to be entertained by it. 

I want it most when I’m not with you, 

when the rush of the lives of others 

can compensate for my own. 

Once in Daytona, with the spring breakers 

outside the motel, we churned channels. 

I landed on the greyhounds. They had thin 

wire muzzles, their teeth bared. The men 

on the screen were all in sportscoats, 

handing over dollars, I realized then, 

that they were racing those dogs, 

and I pressed my nose against the black box. And I 

watched their legs spring straight, line up in the air, 

hunt down the curves of the track. I told you how 

cruel it was to breed a dog just to win, to gamble on 

it, to be born to be faster 

than all the other dogs. I held my face against 

the track and the blunt warmth of the screen. 

I am all of it, I decide. All of it at once, 

placing bets on greyhounds. I am born 

wanting more, taking more from others. 

When the rush of the lives of others 

can compensate for my own. 

The white swell of heat as I sprint 

finish line to finish line, 

each round of the circular track 

blinking. Most men are built from their 

gambling habits. A desire machine 

inside their mouth that moves their bodies 

in the morning. Turns on the television 

at night.

CAPACITY

It is uneasy. The beaches of rock 

and a believable life. Landscapes 

care rarely about the body—the artifacts 

of loss submerging themselves between pebbles 

and statues. All histories return 

to the ordinary. Roman coins cradle our cobblestones, 

porcelain vases engulf our hills. 

Everyone imagines apocalypse, J. said, and so, we 

do not think of our continued, small memory. 

To him, I was a relic to study, to split shakshouka with 

and take to the coasts. 

Somehow, the museums know I’m away: 

fine fescues drinking our apéritifs, the caryatids missing 

their sister, handless. I’d like to think 

each artist has held their morals in permanence— 

never calling off drinks, never brandishing 

the ceramics, those kisses of empire. I know 

this is not true. I believe 

the stories of bad men, liars, and cheaters. But here, 

there is no busyness, no sculpture of man. 

Instead, the earth, with our hints of thievery buried deep. 

Only tracing those stones on the shore, 

climbing the wet guilt, my feet in the shallow 

water. I call out to the inked castles 

on J.’s collarbone, the ones they freehanded in New York. 

This, too, is my New York. My city of sediment, gravel: 

unending sprawl, my artifact of permanence. I wipe his battlements 

and moats off on my palm. It’s as if the skin fades, 

but it doesn’t. There are just more signatures. 

The night comes quickly.