the kenosha kid

You would drink the water of faith

from a stone cup, but when the angel drops

by there is no one to inform you. You wake up

feeling so-so with a dirigible in your heart,

slow and buoyant. Had you kept the schematics

you would know the location of the valve

that releases pressure in the inferior vena cava,

though not how to trigger it. It is not even

your own death which hangs above

you like a cloud but the dark apple

of sympathy blinking overhead! All those willowy

species and not a single hidden message.

Common parts aside, what is really

interchangeable? You go sniffing

around the planet and consider the question

while all around you sorrow explodes

into the troposphere. If anyone is listening

there is no audible discharge, but the opposite

is also true. On a scale of one to ten, ten.