Third Spring 

It doesn’t matter which window the shrimps
flew through so long as the shrimps flew.
So long as I remembered the dream
from the other night, it must have been
the same dream from the same other night.
Each element deeply familiar to me
though I couldn’t describe it ten seconds later.
Dear shrimps, are you prepared for disaster?
Do you have your little shrimp backpacks ready to go,
all filled up with whatever it is that shrimps eat?

❧

Today I had a meeting with the plastic flower
where I showed him a graph
with a line that only went up. Good job,
said the plastic flower, so I continued drawing my line,
this time with a slant to it like a roof.

Today I had a meeting with the plastic flower
where I showed him a drawing of an elevator going sideways.
How can an elevator go sideways? asked the plastic flower.
Like this, I said, and I made an elevator go sideways.
It burst out the side of the building and just kept going.

Today I had a meeting scheduled with the plastic flower
and the plastic flower in charge of the plastic flower.
Be careful, said the plastic flower in private before the meeting.
Plastic flowers aren’t always so understanding.
Don’t worry, I said, I’m not a plastic flower.

Today I had a meeting with the two plastic flowers.
I showed them a drawing I’d made of two plastic flowers.
The mood curdled instantly like milk in a time machine.
No one wants to be a plastic flower. Everyone wants
to blast through the wall in an elevator at 100mph.

❧

Dear world, I said, I have finished my recording.
Ok, said the world, but what’s your favorite font?
This one, I said, and then I flung it towards the light.
Thanks, said the spectral hollow beneath the stairs.
It sang to me every night. It hung on my teeth like yogurt.
They say a screen degrades, but a better way of putting it
is that we degrade a screen, the screen doing nothing
but lying there trying its best to stay the same.
Would you like help writing a letter?
Or dragging a polyester blackout curtain
through floodwater made of light? Or trying to put it
in the laundry after? A big commercial machine?
Wow, everyone repeated. Imagine all those gallons.
We stood a while imagining all those gallons
until it was time to leave. Thanks everyone,
I said, and dimmed the signals.
But the corroded fonts would not recede.