Outside actual work is still ripe proof
I’ve learned.
I’ve learned. I’ve learned.
I’ve learned. Then the night shows I never do.
It circles back to “actual work”—where is it?
In the promise of worth sprouts the probable corn.

I’ve already attacked the present.
Easy target.
Redeemed, somewhat, considered as fiction.
We inhabit it.

People used to say shit like, “That’s so meta.”
Now it’s, “So you’re… well, you,
teaching a decolonization class at an elite,
private university—do you
feel conflicted?”

Tonight I watched a lithe dog—
half coyote, you insisted—dig
a hole in the square of high desert
you call a yard and, after dark,
craning to look straight up
I said, “Ah, Osiris’s wad.”

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