Transmitter and Receiver. Raoul Fernandes

their rooms. Sometimes you catch yourself

      singing without knowing you are singing

      and sometimes you don’t even catch yourself.

      Worn Book

      The spine’s threads and glue coming apart

      from frequent shelving, being shoved into backpacks,

      tossed across rooms; the cover tarnished,

      water/coffee/wine damage,

      dog ears, rippled pages, stains from a petal

      pressed between pages 26 and 27,

      tiny crushed insects like misplaced punctuation,

      damage from the book louse’s

      feeding on the mould in the paper,

      the mould too, of course, scribbled notes,

      shards of highlighter, the slow fading

      from light itself. Our fingerprints,

      the oil of our hands, the oil and sweat

      of our shaking, paper-cut hands.

      Dear Liza

      You need a flashlight to find the flashlight.

      A cup of coffee to muster the energy

      to get to the coffee maker. Call

      the phone-repair man with your smashed

      phone. Decipher the patterns in the ceiling.

      The pill that takes away your fear of heights

      is at the top of the ladder. I gave up everything for you,

      he says. Everything that I wanted you to keep,

      she says. Signing up for the fire-juggling course

      requires that you have already taken

      the fire-juggling course. Your face hovering

      above the puzzle is an unfinished puzzle. Scattered

      sky-blue pieces. A frown is a frozen ripple.

      A shudder is you trying to be in two places at once.

      But there’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.

      Try and try, give up and try again. And give up.

      I cannot say sorry until you say sorry first,

      they both think. The oars to your boat are floating away.

      Itch in the phantom limb. Cut flowers in the vase

      with all their love-me / love-me-not petals.

      You first, they both think. Please. You search

      your pockets outside your locked car. Where

      are they? Oh, right. In the ignition.

      There they are.

      Automatic Teller

      The fast-cash ATM wonders why

      the woman looks so sad

      when it prints out

      pale numbers

      on a small piece of paper

      after she clearly pressed yes

      when offered a receipt

      wonders if this is some

      personal narrative

      it is not privy to

      through its built-in camera

      the ATM’s limited view

      is the lower half

      of a streetlight pole

      a newspaper box

      updated daily

      a laundromat across

      the road with lopsided

      hanging fluorescent lights

      I’d print something better

      if I could

      it thinks

      fortune-cookie ribbons

      or

      the inverse

      of every news headline

      I’d generate some music

      if I had more

      than one tone

      crush that little paper

      it wants to say

      throw it into the air

      behind you

      from these winter blossoms

      our city will know

      something better has to be

      dreamed up

      go along now

      there is another waiting

      behind you

      clutching his coat

      in all this

      cold swirling data

      dreaming something too

      Suspension

      Playground with interlocking tunnels. Willows worry

      their reflections in the frog pond. Little gods throw spheres,

      miss as often as they catch. Coins flicker in the fountain bed,

      worth exactly the feeling of wishing. Leaves in circulation.

      Runners in circulation. A young girl in the shade scratches

      at a scratch-and-win. Grown men with dream journals in their

      back pockets wander among the birch trees. Dolphin on a spring.

      Rabbit on a spring. Swings used in inventive ways. Sweethearts.

      A tall woman walks an oracular greyhound. A beetle-child

      hums his way home from his cello lesson. Some bright flapping

      memory is caught in a tree and is also an actual thing: a kite.

      What happens in real life is absorbed into dream journals.

      Flocks of young soccer players aligning, dispersing. A small

      god pops an empty juice box under his sneaker. Another

      laughs and shouts, Angel! Angel! as his dog pulls him

      by the leash through a flowerbed. Frisbee-sliced air.

      Pale moon on a string. A maple drops a leaf into your hair

      to get your attention. Okay, sweetheart, you’ve got it.

      Then more leaves drift down toward the earth.

      Blackout

      The storm gathers, stirs a tree, breaks

      a branch, takes out a cable, cuts the power,

      quiets our fridge, watches us through the window

      where we sit to eat ice cream in the dark.

      You strike a match, cup the flame,

      touch it to the candle’s wick.

      The city is already motioning to repair

      but we can’t hear it for the trees. We hope

      it will take its time. Who will sit

      at the piano tonight? The child

      given relief from her homework. A relief

      for the moment. The storm

      raining