like this.
DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE
I am wearing my librarian costume.
Yes, I saved it from the fires.
In the future, when we say antiquity, we mean
state fairs and musicals. We mean affairs
of state, amusement. You left me a message
to say you were sad but you understood
which state I was coming from and I’m wondering
now which state you meant. West of us?
Or did you mean a state of mind?
I don’t have states of mind, I only have sweater sets.
I get dressed up and then I undress. I’d show you,
but this is a dispatch. I’m the dispatcher.
The calls come into my call center and
it’s my job to say, What’s the future
of your emergency?
Our new state flag is an aurochs—
not to celebrate extinction, but
to celebrate the wild part of us that died
in 1627. They moved her skull to Stockholm.
I wear my state flag like a dress.
DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE
In the future, you live in Switzerland
and you come to see us sometimes
but I wish you could see us now.
We’re certainly missable.
We’re certainly sexy
in a way that only gets better
with age. As a child,
I was not even a little bit sexy.
I lived at a boarding school
and I owned only one sweater,
two cassette tapes, three pieces
of string, and all my organs.
Were they keeping us alive
for our poetry?
Of course not.
They were keeping us alive
for our lungs.
They were keeping our mothers
from us.
The closer I get to completion,
the closer I want to hold you
in the make believe moonlight.
PLEASE HANDLE YOUR CHILDREN
When I see my one particular enemy I am filled with laughter
and the good times, as if I do not know he sees through me
as, how do you say, the fog? Do you know this reconciliation,
as moderated by the United Nations? I thought we could
send our representatives in the form of poets.
My poet would have this letter to say, All the leaves
have trees. His poet would have this letter to say,
My client no longer wishes to see your client except
as the fog. I am that child behind you on this airplane.
I am screaming to hear the sound of my voice.
Someone put me on regular sleep schedule please.
Someone else tell my enemy I know he sees me.
Then forget representatives. Let us send ghosts
to act out our, how do you say, erotic dance?
I know I am a child because I have been
to more bar mitzvahs than funerals.
I know I am a child because in the fields
of ocean out the airplane window, I see
fear. Do you want to be knowing
if this is based on true story?
When I see my one particular enemy
I want to lie down and, how do you say,
give it up. I am his enemy but he is not
mine. I am a child. Please to handle me.
REVISIONISM
Listening to you in your sleep, pretending
this is just as good as if I were asleep myself,
the tender evening behind us like a jet trail
like a tiger tonight. I’m pretending your arms
are your arms, which is to say I’m not
pretending they belong to someone else,
good for me, but I’m still not above keeping track
of the anniversaries of everything I’m brokenhearted
over and this goes for men, departures
and arrivals, weddings I was not invited to
for good reason, achievements of my enemies.
I’m thinking of rewriting history so instead of jealousy
my major themes are revenge and justice, and
I’m going to the airport so we can miss each other more,
because I want a future to look forward to,
another new year already, noisemakers
and dry champagne and songs I know
the words to and the way you looked at me
at the costume party: I want another chance
for second chances. I never make the same mistake
more than four or twelve times, but enough
about you, tell me more about you.
DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE
Someone told me that my life would be easy
because my face looks like this.
Did I win any prizes this week? No.
And guess what else? I don’t belong to you.
I hate to be the one
to tell you, but phones are no longer in use.
Please be patient while we try and fix this.
We thank you for your patience.
We’re putting your patience on our daily
gratitude list. We’re getting our harmonicas
and we’re standing in a row
in our farmer’s wife dresses.
Dispatch from the future:
I have all the time in the world
and I don’t want to spend any of it.
Dispatch from the future:
when I say I want to take off all my clothes
I don’t mean what if we had sex. I mean listen
to the sublime: sun on my shoulders, God in my ear.
Dispatch from the future:
life is only too short if you are having a good time.
ADDENDUM TO THE PREVIOUS DISPATCH
I just remembered every single thing I’ve ever done
and now I’m embarrassed. I want my afterlife
guaranteed, so I have ordered a tomb built at Giza
for my remains. They are as follows: all my clothes,
my harmonica, my body, letters to my enemies.
The dictionary says you can refer to everyone
who will be alive in the future as prosperity so
Dear Prosperity, I used to live in the future,
too, but I fear the past is a brushfire
and I am a prairie. Now that I have what I asked for
I see I should have been more specific.
REMEMBER YOUR FUTURE
True: time travel is tricky, but backwards
is easier than forwards because at least you know
the way. In my memory it is always autumnal
and my weight approximately seven stones. Birds
fly in droves, dervishes to their bird god
on their way to Florida, and in their memories
it seems always a season for leaving. I watch them
hover above the temple where the police
officer stands guard each Sabbath. I watch them
while I listen to someone tell me about weddings
where he comes from, how the groom must choose
his bride blindfolded, from among her friends and
sisters, feeling their bodies one by one down the line,
checking for familiars. When I say choose I mean
remember. When I say remember I can’t forget
Konstantin, how he asked to carry my purse
through the arboretum in July and let me know
his mother is widowed in Kiev, though his father
is still alive. As far as he knows. As far as he can throw
stones with the boyfriend I left for a map, the sister
who may one day stand in line at my weddi
ng
to be caressed by the blind. True: when the seasons
change, I get like this. It is a little like gymnastics
and a little like a pelvic examination:
uncomfortable, routine, and sometimes
my life is at stake. I used to have a friend
who got like this too, someone to go to yoga
with at the end of the world, but then
she found god and alternative methods
of contraception and now we speak
in halting cadence, like women
from different tribes, separated
by a river, a river filled with stones,
a river you could only get to if you
were from Kansas and thought you could fly
around the waistline of the world,
until you crashed somewhere
in the Pacific, never to be found.
I feel autumnal tonight. Let’s go
to the future, where our bird god
lives, and ask for stronger wings.
WANT AD FROM THE FUTURE
I just realized I am out of currency, food, and time.
I am, how do you say, bereft of necessity.
Not only you were at that party, but your wife
was dressed like a board game and she spoke
to me of every thing that matters not at all.
Want ad from the future: we are seeking
anonymity. Birds came. They told me
I would be more happier without a face.
I said but what about these enemies.
The birds said even with no face
your enemies will know you
by your body. I said let us
get rid of it then. I am,
how do you say, not having
a body anymore. Hello
from the future, where
we are seeking reasons
to keep our clothes on.
Except me. I have no shoulders.
I fed them to this dingo.
I’VE WRITTEN ALL OVER THIS IN HOPES YOU CAN READ IT
Welcome to sparkly tomorrowland.
We have prepared this room for your arrival.
We hope you like the view.
We hope you like the Nile.
Birds came; they told us a mournful
cadence and a flustered two-step
is your kind of Friday night and
we said we’d never seen
this kind of trembling before.
Blame the colonizers, the birds
said, before flying off to Oaxaca,
never to be seen again. Yes,
there are people here, but only if you
want there to be people
here. We can cater. Our people
are puppets and our puppets
are incredibly lifelike, like people.
Most of our staff will not bother you,
but anyone who does we guarantee
will be hot, and covered in spring grasses.
No regrets. And no hope either.
We pride ourselves on this:
somewhere, it is already tomorrow.
DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE
In the future, we pay our debts with blood.
Always more where that came from.
And the white noise sounds like sun.
Lily, I’m gonna run
and run
until I’m back where I started.
I’m gonna invert my body, bathe
my brain in blood.
This is a devotional.
Lily, don’t cry.
This is a devotional.
Listen to the sun.
Isn’t there some Eden we can meet in?
Bring your prayer
to your third eye.
In the future, we temper our irreverence
with beauty. What a stunner, we tell
our ancestors, retroactively.
I used to have to try so hard to look
like I wasn’t trying and now look:
I’m bending to the altar wall.
This is a devotional for the living.
Lily, don’t fear the future.
I’m in it. We’re here.
DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE
In the future, we are tender.
We temper our irreverence
with intimacy.
It’s, like, slightly wonderful.
We pronounce magic
like we’re from Michigan,
and all our mothers continue
mothering, like harbors,
indefinitely.
There’s a sense of indeterminacy
with mothering and we take
turns standing like breakwaters.
Life is dangerous, wild, and yet
we welcome it.
We’re in therapy.
It’s called water.
DISPATCH FROM THE FUTURE
Yes, I am writing to you from there.
Yes, in the future, we have excitement.
Also: a forgiveness economy.
All IOUs are tied to balloon
strings and released into the atmosphere
in an environmentally responsible way.
Lunch is free for everybody. Lunch
is peanut butter sandwiches, sliced
on the diagonal, by mothers. We are sparkly.
Everything is pleasure, but we are
also acutely empathetic, like children.
When one starts crying, another answers.
A fugue state.
We are sparkly but we also remember
what it was like before we were. We can
relate to our past selves: dull like mercury,
alluvial soil, just after the earthquake.
It’s hard to know which disaster to expect, yet
no one ever thinks, I don’t want to do anything
except sleep forever maybe. Yes, in the future
we are prepared for what we cannot prepare
for. We are sparkly for a reason, our country
depends on us for a kind of warning entertainment.
In the future we never make pilgrimages to disaster
sites, we lay flowers on the brows of the living.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to the editors of the following journals, in which some of these poems first appeared: Absent, Bat City Review, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Catch Up, Diagram, h-ngm-n, horseless review, InDigest Magazine, Jellyroll, LIT, Low Rent, MiPOesias, No Tell Motel, Nöo Journal, Ocho, OH NO, Sixth Finch, Softblow, and Washington Square.
Many poems also appeared in these chapbooks: How to Mend a Broken Heart with Vengeance (Dancing Girl Press), Summer in Paris (Mondo Bummer), and The Future Comes to Those who Wait (Grey Book Press).
The poem that begins “In the future, you live in Switzerland,” takes much of its content from a letter Elizabeth Hildreth’s five-year-old daughter wrote to their Swiss foreign exchange student, Julia.
The poem that begins “In the future, we pay our debts with blood,” is dedicated with love to Lily Ladewig.
The title “I’ve Written All Over This in Hopes You Can Read It” came to me in an email from Nate Pritts.
“Epistolaphobia” is a word Edna St. Vincent Millay invented to describe the feeling of being unable to write letters.