I’m drinking yellow lemon-
ade, my chipmunk cheeks
tingling, mixing my
DNA with life-giving
sugar. Glass bottle with no label,
cold, doesn’t spill.

Chips Ahoy! Oh, I remember that name,
and the package is disappearing, bit by
bite, like a glacier, nature’s litterbug –
What is the best title for this passage?
depositing minerals and nutrients and
life-giving sugar, grows grit on my teeth
And I’m back.

And I sit in the grit, in the endless
stretch of the desert, Nevada nothingness,
on Margate sands, slipping into a sleeping bag
while the jagged horizon, rising in glaciers and
twisted red handkerchiefs
fills the windows. I’m underwater. The Lightning
Thief in my lap, lemonade and cookies,

I can still show you
the chocolate-chip smudge on the left page
a page a mile
I can still show you
I can
I always will

My lips are liquefied
burning burning, iowa firefly
and I want to be
here forever