1 Kinda glad poetry is dead. The New York Times pronounced it. I’d rather speak to the dead in a dead language, if you know what I mean. When I say something to Musil now, 2 he nods, rather than giving me that befuddled grunt. 3 Even now, I’m not sure if he understands, or even listens. Enough said. Dead. dead. Dead. 4 When I got fired from Twitter, 5 they didn’t know all the bots I had created. I felt proud like a heinously ugly man anonymously donating sperm. I loved each day suspending accounts on a whim, or, best of all, letting the tweet stand but robbing it of any power to be shared or seen (unbeknownst to the tweeter!) i can still hear all the writhing screams I bottled in old milkman’s glass 6 I called my office The Dead Letter Office and named my computer Bartleby. I read once about free speech absolutism but got too bored to finish. I thought a public square sounded weird. 7 Adagio? Huh? At this point? Imagine a Murakami character cooking pasta like only they can. 8 The pusillanimity of boiling water 9 O, I like the transmigration of souls there, there when B shifts melodic minor 10 Oh, Lalo. Lalo Lalo Lalo. That time Federico Garcia Lorca snuck ambrosia into your espresso. Lalo, Lalo! Mild remembering heavy with forget
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Dylan Willoughby (he/him) has poetry forthcoming in Conduit, and has appeared in Denver Quarterly and CutBank. He has been a fellow at MacDowell and Yaddo.