Lightning is a terrible spaghetti
aiming at my baby face.

Lightning wants to raze the fuzz
from my lip
and distribute chore wheels
to all my neighbors.

(What would it be like to own a laundromat?
 I know someone who knows.)

Finally, there is only me,
plus the crystal palace
spread with marmalade
dissuading the public of casting their votes.

You tell me it's better this way,
bereft of nothing
so we may mourn each other
from our separate places,
never waging an actual glance.

Dumbstruck are the molecules
as hubcaps roll on cue.

Lightning is a terrible spaghetti. What I mean is always on the other side,
other than the words, I mean.

Our breakfast cooking up smells to welcome us
home     here.     This house
we cleaned it, clean as a bone,
gone some weeks, now returned.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,”
you said, as cover, because
you cooked too much:
tomatoes, onions, soft boiled eggs,
balsamic salad, and butter
on toast.

Good a time as any to change. Get back, remain
the same, and better.
We could be house flippers.
We could manage an antique market.
A curiosity shop for our curious things.

“I want an unabridged dictionary of everything,” I said.
“I want a fat book of just words to read.”

Promiscuous stems apically rising
from agave rosettes (we stroll by
          with our coffee).

It’s only language after all—the cat now crying,
hawks in the eucalyptus tree, the largest
in our neighborhood.

Our friends from Barcelona, did we
ever really meet them? Of course we did!
They gave us a mysterious microwave. The year was 1999,
and around every street corner
was an internet café,
brick-and-mortar discotheques,
and certain mysterious establishments
not even the mailman could fathom.

The truth of the New Age was nigh;
bedazzled maestros of the orchestra
felt its jaunty kiss, and said so.

We laced up our ice skates
and commenced to sally forth,
etching our progress across the northern lakes,
neck and neck with delinquent hermits
long since bored of their stations,
all of us like insects consumed by a terrific exigency
unexplainable to any but our own.

Of course, eventually the hoorah settled down.

Now at the center of the Earth
there exists a crater the size of a thimble.
A flower grows inside the crater;
its petals smell like bubblegum. It’s fun to walk with you
as I lie here dreaming.

In the Golden Age of Edible Glitter.

I agree, these mirrors are fraudulent players
running amok in the wings,
their chandeliers felled by distemper,
overcome by the bends,
and shedding a bad light that makes this private disco really flop.

Little jumping bugs of aluminum
         staining your armpits—a bruise
you’ll only fix for fashion.

The clock in the kitchen is fast,
but wait a minute!

Let’s go grocery shopping.


Will Stanier is a poet and printer from Athens, Georgia. He's the author of a chapbook, Everything Happens Next (Blue Arrangements, 2021). His poems have recently appeared in The Volta, RECLINER, Annulet, and The Baffler.