Your Stomach Is Always a Little Unsettled in Heaven
as if the milk in your coffee had curdled or your crush
were opening the locker next to yours. In heaven,
the hair-like spine from a cactus can’t be tweezed
from your finger, even under the brightest light.
None of the pens work in heaven, and nobody
throws them out. Pockets and purses in heaven
are inky with thoughts, and it’s difficult to get
the news from anything not a poem. In heaven,
there’s no planned obsolescence. You bake a cake,
buy a card and pass it around discreetly
for signing whenever an appliance retires.
In heaven, you stand in line until the bouncer
who used to work at Berghain tells you
no, and you can go home. You hang out
on your couch a lot in heaven. It’s mustard corduroy
and seats everybody you’ve ever known
in heaven, and before. Riddles hang in the air
like piñatas without a stick in heaven, and one
damn dog barks all night long.
Everyone’s nose quivers wet-black
in heaven where there are no bad smells,
only “interesting” ones. The designer fragrance
flying off the shelves in heaven is “Body
Odor,” written in triple-axle cursive
that no one can read or agree to abandon.
In heaven, the seat in front of you reclines
so far back, the passenger’s head rests
in your lap, your hands draped over their brow
like a cool washcloth. Your mother in heaven
still shadows smokers in her trench coat,
hungrily huffing their blue outbreath.
In heaven, a grapefruit-pink moon floats
above the church spire like a balloon
some child let go of, and it
no longer makes you cry.
as if the milk in your coffee had curdled or your crush
were opening the locker next to yours. In heaven,
the hair-like spine from a cactus can’t be tweezed
from your finger, even under the brightest light.
None of the pens work in heaven, and nobody
throws them out. Pockets and purses in heaven
are inky with thoughts, and it’s difficult to get
the news from anything not a poem. In heaven,
there’s no planned obsolescence. You bake a cake,
buy a card and pass it around discreetly
for signing whenever an appliance retires.
In heaven, you stand in line until the bouncer
who used to work at Berghain tells you
no, and you can go home. You hang out
on your couch a lot in heaven. It’s mustard corduroy
and seats everybody you’ve ever known
in heaven, and before. Riddles hang in the air
like piñatas without a stick in heaven, and one
damn dog barks all night long.
Everyone’s nose quivers wet-black
in heaven where there are no bad smells,
only “interesting” ones. The designer fragrance
flying off the shelves in heaven is “Body
Odor,” written in triple-axle cursive
that no one can read or agree to abandon.
In heaven, the seat in front of you reclines
so far back, the passenger’s head rests
in your lap, your hands draped over their brow
like a cool washcloth. Your mother in heaven
still shadows smokers in her trench coat,
hungrily huffing their blue outbreath.
In heaven, a grapefruit-pink moon floats
above the church spire like a balloon
some child let go of, and it
no longer makes you cry.
