mercury in season

pens lose their ink in pockets. your weakness
for redheads grows increasingly pronounced.

phone lines go static at critical moments
in conversation, everything feels like a metaphor.

a good man comes home at 3 a.m., trips and falls
through a glass coffee table in his parents'

living room. dead of course when found. true story,
the poet tells the folksinger, retrograde. two more days.

a new machine manufactures infinitesimal black holes
lending new credence to string theory. all is all.

it's just that three dimensions are the most we can perceive.
quantum physicists disagree.

cold May, too much rain, a newborn lies
oddly quiet in her crib watching ceiling constellations

shift and shift, trying to catch their breath.