bottom feeders

.





i stayed up with my aunt and my mother until around 130am last night/this morning, talking about shrimp salad, white men, homosexuality, christians and college. we laughed so hard that i felt as if i had just gone through a 15 minute, intensive ab workout. i researched hospitals, mimicked george bush and played out what i thought would be the highlighted aria of the opera that's being made of "an inconvenient truth." it was fun watching my mother and my aunt banter, and it was even more fun to banter with them. i would be seriously discussing something with my mother about colleges and recommendation letters, and my aunt would put down her magazine with a start and say "hey there's a shrimp sale going on at costco"; she started laughing before she even finished the sentence, having realized how ridiculous the sudden comment was, and how inopportune. but even though it was abrupt, we segued into shrimp salad and going senile.
"what's in shrimp salad?"
"...shrimp"
















You are the end of time
and the burden I adduce
for this spilt glass
and strange wind;
but I live as if
the trickling sand
is ceaseless
and as if the downward fall
is laced
with a white clemency.

But forgiveness itself seeks;

you are the exodus.

I am encumbered
by the nuances
I wish I did not know;
all the slight warmths
and shifts
of energy in the wind
and the lurking softness
of grass
divests me of time.






.