I wake with the children
And their oversized dogs.
The landscape is the French braid
And urban sprawl.
Semiotics is the prevailing religion.
You must tip your baker now.
Ennui is a zip code,
But the gardens are spreading.
The dogs overrun the aisles
Taste-testing the tomatoes and bell peppers.
They know something we don’t
About gut health and nuclear waste.
Yes, this is a catalogue
Of dispatches from the deep.
This is a postmodern novel.
I’m a man at sea.
I’m suffering myself to love you,
Isn’t that brave.
What surprised you about the composition of this poem?
I was surprised by the end-stopped couplets. Couplets are a comfortable stanza for me, but the way these operate is atypical. I often prioritize speed and propulsion. The end-stopped couplets seem to work against this instinct. Despite the pauses, I believe the poem accrues momentum as it moves down the page, hopefully running the reader headlong into the final couplet. I was also surprised by the voice of the opening lines. It was different from the voice in anything else I was writing at the time; from the first to the final draft the opening couplet never changed.