Except that she was here now, and the oddest thing of all was that she seemed to belong here more than me.

Ways We Vanish by Todd Dillard (Okay Donkey Press 2020)

My mother says it, too. “I am not my body,” she says. But she does not say it the way my doctor says it. My doctor says it softly, to me.

Outside

Yes, I lost the lottery. I can never write about the moon again, only the neon ball locked between the dog's fangs, only what it's like to see without glasses. I buy expensive oils which come in dark bottles labeled Sleep. I buy expensive oils which come doorstep so I need not leave. The eggplant talks to me. The dog talks to me but I don't know Basque. The weeks wind so tight. Drowning was...

theater, I feel you heavy           as the night, fog

folding its hands into thick blankets placed over

the empty street—the cinema              spills across 

the concrete. Popcorn, candy, some hand-me-

down script traced and retraced

with trembling fingers. Sex scene, soliloquy,

a sweet memory to take to bed. This is

what we carry with us: the wind...

The lake crawled into my driveshaft and locked the axles.

Composure as mechanical frequency of I-beams, steel

railroad bridge. Its crescendo met with a rubber mallet

lover. Could I be drug across town tied to the rear axle

of a Bronco? Eyes strung from the rearview mirror like dice.

Goodbye traction control, goodbye loose gravel.

The nation’s forests or their ransom: payable to the fire giant

at the dead...