AT THIS TIME
I believe a silver box controls the weather.
And that ants live on lemongrass in Oklahoma.
And that you are, right now, expressionless,
perusing the afternoon’s terrible magazine light.
That I have been seduced by coin purses on eBay
stitched with Jimmy Carter’s face,
and that, just this morning, for an hour straight
repeated the phrase I saw in your garage:
TOE PLATE FOLDS FOR EXTENDED LOADS
and I believe in what Katy told me
about the afterlife, and that a very ancient man
took the first photograph thousands of years ago,
of a grasshopper marching uphill in a windstorm.
Let us pause a moment for the brave grasshopper.
PROLATE SPHEROID SHAPE
I am a failed athlete, Margaret.
Most of my life has been spent
hiding from this fact.
I am bringing it all together.
A brief glimpse of vulcanized rubber
in a prolate spheroid shape
sends me directly into
the future, beneath a black tarp
where the rest of my people lay.
We are a soft, whimsical people,
born without “that feeling.”
Margaret I am penning this
beneath your daffodil umbrella.
On damp graph paper,
right outside your door.
A fog has appeared and it is phantasmic.
The rain is gone.
But now I am stuck here.
A slip of moonlight
has escorted itself into
the dark chambers of Mott St.
where I stand, stiff
as the pencil I am holding.
TIMOTHY MICHALIK is a Michigan born poet and an MFA candidate at NYU, where they teach undergraduates. They are the founding editor of the journal/press Copenhagen.