Softcover Words

Read this “How to…” book
and communicate in softcover words
your hardcover deeds —

herding sheep and goats,
lying with packs of dogs,
theorizing  yersinia pestis theorems,
and puzzling though a sheaf
of sanity assassins.

Read about the coughing
and sneezing of the infected.
Eat stands of banana, malanga, and yuca.

And make ten thousand marks
silvery and lustrous gray —

recounting the executions carried out
by children bored of kicking
old oil drums green
and rusted brown.

What I’m Reading:

I spend the drive searching for cactus
as if cactus was part of our bodies

— Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme / Until we became fire and fire us