One

My jaw was wired to your moods.
One day it seized up and you got happy.

I used to walk in straight lines.
Then I bought a bicycle and started driving in straight lines.

Hunger is like being hungry.
Except your hair is always appetizing.

I saw two ants having sex yesterday.
Yet again, it could have been today.

Comparing poems is ridiculous.
Instead I compare people I think make a lot of sense.

You make a lot of sense.
Except when my mouth doesn’t open.

Three

Line breaks are good for your enemies.
Not as good as fractures, especially compound.

The word love was put back above my head again.
Two men in a truck said that was their job.

Amputation is interesting.
Maybe bad breaks can be thought of that way.

I smelled burning hair on the train in June.
June is not the cruelest month; it’s a hot one though.

Fetid closet.
That’s where I am tonight.

Next to your treasured bowling ball.
And all those shoes I think nobody could walk in.

Four

One of your problems is that you believe in angels.
You believe that they fly, but also wear regular clothes.

God said to me once: it’s your turn.
I rolled and won a hundred dollars.

It would be nice to buy relics for friends during the holidays.
Shriveled fingers behind glass—think about that for a second.

Where did you go off to this year?
You’ve been away so long I established an alibi.

When you asked for change at around midnight my neck went into spasm.
Now I can’t turn my head side-to-side to see if you’re home.

I can hear the television.
I hope the television can’t hear me playing Sibelius on my mouth harp.

Matlock is not particularly dashing.
His suits sound like your mood early mornings.

If only I could see them.
Your mood early mornings.

David Michael Wolach, 29 and originally from Detroit, teaches writing, poetics, and philosophy at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, where he also hosts the annual literary conference Press. Author of two chapbooks and one novel, and a collection of essays on artistic transgression and public dissent, Wolach's work has appeared this year or is forthcoming from Night Train, Saint Elizabeth Street, The Duplications, Storyglossia, Ditch, AB OVO, Fuselit, Poetry Midwest, Thieves Jargon, The Delinquent, and The Sydney Anthology of Literature and Aesthetics, among others. Winner of a Broadside Press Poetry Award and a Peralta Press Editor's Prize for New Fiction, Wolach serves as Managing Editor of Wheelhouse Magazine.