What said and the response does not repeat itself

but speaks as an immigrant/emigre softer

remembering Tuesdays with one marrying’s what

and then she wept as I considered sandwiches

with french toast from the french toast dispensing napkin

dispenser I made everything with the french press

started each sentence O for a time photographed

anything and titled it Place the odd prices

set so with tax to an even dollar hotel

before the hotel name at the Hotel Before

we showered three times not meteoric, nights, but

meteoritic this language we could translate

but not explain as turning a chessboard around

halfway through we traded lobster for lamb concrete

split like marble still said crack open a cold one

opening each banana thus some happiness

outlasts us average house size grew bottles’ water

the only water the warning-planes light blinking

on towers because a steady draws (?) J.’s book-length

on Pound then remembering Cafe Allegro

discussing how the rhythm leans at once forward,

back, because of photographs (mirrors, beds) it is

easier for us to see beauty still today

is my twenty-fourth birthday your dresses hang like

a felled-tree’s leaves...