I wanted to grow up to be a raincloud over an upstate reservoir during a draught.
Then it was my ambition to become a slender woman, or a book cover cut from a grocery bag,
or a trumpet, or a garden rake, or a handkerchief embroidered with a strawberry heart.
I wonder about the future poems
I will read, generated by AI,
the imperceptibly pixelated
tulips pushing through the rich soil in them,
the deepfake MFA bios attached
to them like deflated orange balloons
Like Christian kids, hopped up on guilt and hormones, looking for a loophole— the bat’s penis is too
Before you died, you promised me
a book of poetry. It was the day
we planted the maple. We sprawled
in the dirt beside our newest sapling.
Chest like a trapdoor and me a medic,
parachuting in, leaning over the body shattered
on the rubbled road, I listen to the heart ticking
like unexploded ordnance …
Along the border of any governed region, there exists a value which must
satisfy its laws. This is a rule I learned for solving differential equations.