Love Notes

Do you love vague commitments?
Do you love bad news in crooning shapes?
Whole or half, tattoos mooning on

conjoined ribcages? Check this box &,
like a breath, you’ll feel mostly bygone.

Like one of those early recordings, you’ll
be scratchy & demystified. Untranscribably
confessional, until the last quarter note

is a processional. You’ll be absolutely fine,
flipped to the B side of this note’s high-lined

referendum. Magnificent & stark inside
the addendum, like a big breath exhaled
through the smart part of a question mark.

From Somebody Else Sold the World (Penguin Poets), Copyright © 2021. Reprinted with the permission of the poet and publisher.