the courtyard rat squatting on an empire of pizza boxes rainsoaked piles of stewing cardboard flattened packaging from long covid's eager merchandise anything to transcend an unimagined plague rat traps line the walls like doctors' obsolete portmanteaux from a much earlier decade

dream’s letterhead lies exhausted in the recycling bin    someone is so awake to the moment    the black opulence of the room at 4am    a hello new day screen lights up    bulletins of hydrated

when i read at sappho’s last week my lower left jaw was packed with cotton wool to stop a broken tooth from tearing at my ulcerated tongue the poems were saved from humiliation