I read a lot in form.
So a lot of these are forms.
They don't have any titles; I've abandoned titles completely.
So you can guess where the new poem begins.
In the PICU.
The bow of my right shoelace falls out, linoleum dragged.
In the PICU, I count two minutes between cries
for sucrose-coated pacifiers.
Five were occluded TPN, 15 for low oxygen plinth waves.
Every four hours, pressed at x, sponge baths daily
Seven translucent tubes tunnel, one bilious remover,
Another respirator shushing the minutes and hours
In CC's of weeks we've measured life by,
Seated next to a phalanx of infusers,
Reading Bulgakov, disheartened by ingredients needed
for a vampire named drink,
A pandemic exacts itself outside,
Our hair thickens, curls in myth and isolation,
Migraine cries, muted with sugar water,
Saguaros beyond the windows--
Saguaros beyond the window glass ignore
us millimeters by millennia.
1980, I grew the decade with my mother, wired and incision
stitched.
That I'm ineffective against your hunger,
I tire, spiral toward indifference.
Once I disappeared to Philadelphia,
Left for the funeral of my only grandma,
Returned to a single accomplishment roof
repair during earthquake,
Green, swirling skies.
Away,
Nothing much matters other than you're here,
The weeks week.
Rubberized beds in other units
Stripped of sheets, you sleep, and I see you.
[APPLAUSE]