afternoon collecting ginkgo leaves that remember Permian oceans.


First Time

The first manifestation of being a poet was when my pants got stuck in the chain of a bicycle. I was pedaling home and my pantaloons were swaying along to the staccato rhythm. When they got in, it was a moment the world halted. My pants got sucked in by the great wheel of the universe and before them their life flashed which is to say
the whole of my wardrobe. My left leg was desperately thrashing and flapping, but the right one was not meeting it and if it continued, it would certainly destroy my left knee. For a moment I mistook my leg for a sparrow trapped by a mechanical spinning spider web. It was still dangling uselessly back and forth trying to unhook itself from this lethal meshing. I was afraid it would come down with Turrets. The only way
to detach myself was to desert the bicycle and pants caught red-handed in a mortal embrace with a machine which according to Chinese people, is a little mule, led along by its ears & spurred on with a shower of foot blows. I have to slow down this moment to take off my pants and run through the street to my door in my red panties.
The finish line was filled with determination, twists and turns of the key attacking the wooden door like a neurotic woodpecker.
I want you to know a big battle happened here. Kind of a Tour de France. I contemplated grafting a little commemorative plate at the exact place of the event. Now I do it over and over again stripping myself slightly more voluntarily yet still pretending it's an accident. Discovering the secret pleasures of syntactical spokes, syllabic nakedness.