Content warning:
i stopped dreaming of Neptune; a sky raining diamonds collected into my hat
i mean, into the gloved hands of my mother’s surgeon //
tonight, i’m suctioned into a dreamscape where the ghost of my father is a spaceship
pirate on this plain of light, gas & dust // from a sun dog, he rides on
a UFO plastered with the stickers of soccer stars from the future ; all cyborgs
he asks about home i tell him the hand of our clock is a dart ; it strikes twelve &
there is a windfall of mangled bodies on our streets black boys
in a Venn diagram with two circles in a rectangle indicating the relationship
between bullets & boys he sighs then, inverts an hourglass of stardust
to allow more time with me //
from here, earth is an aquarium of dead fish nanobots transmit his thoughts
in a wireless cloud screens display a fond memory of him spinning me around
remembrance is a letter burning in reverse, he says whetting a spearhead
on an asteroid to hunt drones sent from an alien observatory
i tell him my cousins say grace over plates of bones from necklaced bodies
i tell him it’s another kind of Ash Wednesday now i tell him
much has changed about him so much some villains decompose
into gods, he tells me an average ghost is Einstein’s IQ raised to the power
of all the nerves in the human brain his reflection blue on the surface of the Styx
like a litmus paper in alkaline //
he pulls out a gold tooth & instructs me to buy a casket or pay the bride-price
of my dreams he exiled
says i must hold my breath as i embrace him because, he stinks of regrets
he squeezes nanobots into my palms i would wake up to find as screws
i ask him if he misses home
& his body breaks into a thousand salmons
returning to an eye //