S u z a n n e H i g h l a n d —

Exhibition of Old TVs

The heat rises 'til wheat fields turn to bread lines.

The light lengthens into uninterrupted daytime.

The rich wear Self-Contained Weather Systems.       The rest

crawl from A/C to A/C trying to drink.                      Grease

erases the memory of snow.  The rich

make lemonade,          take their children

to the highway by the sea.

There are many manifestations of domesticated dog.

To be anxious simply means being one with everything.

With the museum of the interior, “I Love Lucy,” birth of a nation.

With my ancestors looking out from the antiquated screens.

With the dollar in my hand, gross as an egg.

Once, anyone could touch

flowers, and we discussed the weather

because it changed constantly and was something we experienced

in tandem, that brought us together.

A Tree Growing in Real Time

Counting the minutes between sirens.

Sending photos of my face to friends on the West Coast.

Taking note of what’s already here: self-preservation.

Texting What is politics? under the covers while you sleep.

Daytime leaping to the bed grazes my forehead.

I pee and check the news, dawn losing out to paranoia.

The squawk invokes mass death and the stock market.

The government is forcing inmates to make soap.

All the museums and restaurants are closed.

I isolate the best place to phone my therapist.

The sirens are nostalgic: the sound of a city getting to work.

Then midafternoon floats in, more wings than death can count.

A bike messenger runs a red light, hands wrapped in plastic bags.

Bare trees stand tall inside a washed out sky.

Around me there’s no one.

In the buildings hiding,

no one, folding over one another in my dreams.

We have nothing

After Lauren Clark

We fear annihilation

when it leaves something behind.

A hummingbird beating

its wings against a plastic flower,

a boat putting a gash in the river

that looks like it hurts to make and hurts to have.

What’s left behind is so alive

I have to separate it from itself, pin it to styrofoam, put the styrofoam under glass.

The last people to walk this land

captured everything in view

like lovesick characters do, miming

a holding with their hands.

Click.

I don’t want to be remembered

for being an autocrat.

I want to remember

what I insisted on: worrying a peach

then covering our mouths with its flesh.

Not wanting to be separated from you, not ever, not ever again.

.