37

I have found a difficult emotion to pinpoint.
The sadness of being able to hurt each other with apathy
that wouldn't be there if we weren't so far away.
That settled, false apathy,
made real only by the distance,
the flown over rows of corn,
the flown over circles of blue lakes.

36

I suddenly feel it
the sweet glorious pain.
It is wrenching in my chest,
and it is something.
I don't know why it took so long,
and why it's only this faint twinge,
but it's something
and it's here.
Soon I'll make my move.
Just a little more, though.
Just a little more.

35

I felt the first pangs just now.
It hit me in the nose,
like bubbles, descending rougly to my stomach.
It is bile.
But I still don't understand.
I am half-glad it is finally here.

34

I still feel quiet.
I still see that little ribbed snake.
Metal and gray.
It's looking at me
not unlike you were.
I don't have anything to say,
but so much.

33

I saw "God" the word
in a pulled pube in the toilet.

So this is what it's like to have telepathy.
To see your face and hear your words apart.
And have no idea what anyone ever has felt
anywhere in the world,
all over the freckle in your eye and
pulled hair in a ponytail
with glassy eyes, but less like
glass than I want.

32

That butterfly feeling
won't leave me
no matter if I blink
thirty-seven times
down the page in
poetry class,
or over the Maple lines
that just compiled.
There is no other focus
beyond the snakes at the bottom
of the lake.
Even though they'll
never
bite.

31

I happen to like Mondays.
It's new, and the sun is shining,
and while you have to leave
the weekend somewhere behind your shoulder
like thrown salt,
there's a fountain ahead,
and dew in the hissing air.

30

There's a window,
spotted with trees.
That I run towards,
with a path beneath,
bending out from under me,
and a bench with a man
in the moonlight.
The sprinklers are turned off
by the time we return.
And it is midnight.
And warm out.
The trees dotted like christmas with bugs.

29

I don't know why,
but when I first got into this
REU
I thought I'd be way behind.
And just last night I didn't know
what today I'd be doing.

The lights in the room are some of my favorite.
One cell in the middle, two that hum with
the chill of a refrigerator
on either side.

28

Normally,

we're all awkward.
And it's fine,
because no one can presume
to be any better.

It'd be worse if everyone else
weren't awkward.
If there were that one guy
that we liked and could invite
it'd be worse to look
in the eyes of the guy
we rejected.

27

I won't make much of it.
I promise.
But I'm travelling into the future tonight.
Across state lines,
as if I were on the lam.
But I'm not.
I'm a simple guy,
singing songs aloud, off-key,
with girls I won't date,
and guys I won't see again after here.

26

The sun sweeps off the pavement
with the dust
like a lion's breath.
I upturn my arms to strike some tan,
the images pass fast,
there is too much to tell.
It is hot, then cold. Is that sufficient?

25

It's not a field of wheat,
or a sizzling snap of heat.
It's rainy, like home, with trees by the parkway.
And there's a lake with a beach of coagulated sand.
And I have even less time here,
since I left three days ago it's been
four weeks, it seems.
Like in Costa Rica,
the rainforests sunken to ponds.