Year of abrasions.

I submit petitions against my own starvation.

In the county offices, next to where they hold elections,

people mingle and complain about their circumstance and stress injuries.

The feed is monitored on a closed circuit camera.

Primitive accumulation of night in the rearview.

Pouring coolant into the engine in midwinter. I’d watch most of it leak through.

Year of waiting for the car to fail. I am waiting for the weather to let up.

Wanting to indent one day into the next and waiting to hear metal on metal.

The warning across the side mirror is illegible.

What I mean to say is, I am hungry, I want to wrap my arms around

the fluctuations in interest.

People are turned away when they reach the front of the line

for lack of identification or lack of a better reason.

Insufficient refuse tags, twine to recycle one season into the next. I am trying to find

myself between jobs.

I am holding a clicker to count how many people are in the room. I have lost count but

keep up the appearance of counting.

Package handlers watch twilight pass unobstructed out a loading bay door.

They discuss the most recent viral interrogation video on smoke breaks.

Air current against a vacant flag pole. The state bird went extinct.

In that era, all the monuments were made of gauze.

On the second Tuesday of each month the state tests the emergency alert system.

I am submitting petitions to release myself from wanting. The burden of proof is always

with the accuser. And so, when I say the sky seemed ongoing you have no reason to

believe me.

When I say my own name, my reflection gets left behind in tempered glass.