when I know I must rise
to package meat that

brings on carpal tunnel
and knee replacement

I think of an old woman
creviced wearing a scarf

a peasant gleaning she 
bends like a soggy twig

feeling dread as I do sick
to the stone she's inside 

my chest coughing she
is my czech great grand-

mother baba from my 
mother's photo she  

bundles miles of hay 
she drips gray ennui
                        

Marquitos was glad he had written his poems.
He cried reading them at night when he was
worn down by the day of its black brutal 
gazes and soul-whittlings.  He wrote of tattoos 
and purple roses, of bruises, of wounds that
spoke Aramaic, of ghosts with phosphorescent
rings of green and yellow around their necks.

The planets gathered around the earth to hear
him recite them before his PC screen.  They
listened intensely, like children to a story of a
lost adorable animal.  They wept and froze
on their axes until they only heard the music
within the words and were lost to all structure
of the stanzas.  Even the earth slowed its spin.

Marquitos believed the words made him, that
they constructed the room he was in, that they
decided if something was beautiful or ugly.
His poem called “Supermoon” made him shine
like diamonds, like the stars.  His words made
the stars there, released the planets to their old
orbits, and he dreamed of blooms and storms.