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.