I AM AN INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE FUELED BY ETHANOL

When a page is ripped from The Book of Explosions the gasoline grows more huffable in its rusted metal tin. When the master cylinder grew tired, my skin rose orange & yellow & inflamed. In the Epson salt bath I read The Book of Dried Cornhusks until I & I-imagined-as-the-engine growled in graveled harmony. The most correct explosion feeds on its own waste; the cooling water coppered with dried blood from the crankcase. O! to wrap the gas-filled plastic bag around my mouth & nose & never perspire!

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DURING PUNCTUATION SUMMER

I thought the buoyant were certain for mills. I dreamed I cut a brick wall with a razor blade & it bled over my hands. It was the summer that rock stars died impractically: Jeff Buckley drowning in the river, Timmy from Brainiac splitting a tree. The highway dead & electromagnets horneted AM radio waves. Tractor-trailers arced into pavement & explosion.

The mortar ever finishes song. I was hummingbird-scared then. Now I know that suppose & perhaps & punctuation lingers like a cataract. A period I imagine, though a brick wall would do. The brick walls build my wrists. And so I bivouac in Delaware. I refuge in Ohio. Then Sunday comes & the school bell rings & when will the copper coils untangle?

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Neither of these poems distinguish between exclamation points & the truth.