1.
Slow moving objects flying in groups
Lights in the trees. Like those minutes before
the storm when we stood at Kyle’s wedding
looking up. A decision has to be made
about taking shelter. Too high to be birds
too slow to be conventional aircraft
her white dress stood out against the dark gray
sudden drop in pressure. Lights
in the trees. Slow moving. The radar
we shut the radar down and recalibrated to rule out ghost tracks
No notable exhaust from a known propulsion system in other words
I want to know what it would do
to the art if they are not Russian
What I mean by “erratic” is
unknown sources. A beautiful ceremony
because the wall cloud visible behind them
has to be made. I was in Paris once
with Bobby who was mourning his mother
and filming public sculptures. Every few hours he would
in tears. And I would hold him. It is rare for me
to hold a male friend, but I was and looked up to see
these lights. Now, my degree is not in physics
so it is important I rise early and try to get it all down
before my echo. Like walking to meet
Mónica I must have got too much sun
sat on the curb suddenly cold and looked up
to the art. The video shows a source of heat
Birds are out of the question. I have learned to hold
the back of the head when we embrace, it adds
a sense and also slows it down like
if they do make contact and the dead missed it
my mom missed it, he said, a break
in all human understanding she wasn’t here for and I
was like: one, they might have ways
of ministering to the dead and two
and two, there are deep resources in the culture for trying to
understand. The sightlines
of the sculptures he was filming
had these moths in them. No way a human pilot could
unless the outer shell was a cavity filled with gas
2.
At least the white poets might be trying to escape, using
the interplanetary to scale
down difference under the sign of encounter and
late in a way of thinking, risk budgets
the steal, the debates about face
coverings, deep fakes, we would scan
the heavens, discover what we’ve projected there
among the drones, weather events, secret programs
I’m no doubt doing some of that when
I hold the back of his head and see
unexplained lights over him
that love makes, even if what I want in part
is to be destroyed, all of us
at once, and so the end of desire is caught in it
I think it is OK to want that, that wrong desire
must have its place in your art, that the trails
ice probably, and we are alone
and we are not alone with being
Out for the first time since the pandemic, we fought
about the dog and who is allowed to use the word
Palestine, and then almost made up about how
the insolubility, how every problem
scales, and I made my joke
which is not a joke, about the leaked footage
our only hope. Is the work
to get outside the logic of solution or to work
as if there were one, ones
among us. I’m sure they are almost all military
but when the neighbor cut my hair
she was masked, we were outside, she told me her
cousin had been abducted and treated very gently
that they have to make contact somehow
they are waiting for us to evolve
gray hair on the pavement among the cherry
blossoms. And I said
I want to be honest with you, yes, you do sound crazy
I want to believe your story because there is love
in it. Once I was in Paris and my
friend’s mom was in the trees
he didn’t see, I had to hold him and that knowledge
3.
that they are here
among us, that they love us
that we invited them
in without our knowledge
into our knowledge, its cavities
that we have asked to be destroyed
that they are deliberating
in us, that they are part of our sexual life
that they are baffled by us, gentle
to our cousins
that they take the form
that forms can be taken up
that the form is reflected in the Seine
the rim of the glass at Kyle’s wedding
that they are patient
to the point of nonexistence
that they can withstand forces no human pilot
that they have arts
that they are known to our pets
that if you put a pet down
they are beside it without judgment
that they smell vaguely of burning paper
that to meet them would be to remember meeting them
as children, that they are
children, that the work of children is
in us, that they are part of our sexual life
that they are reading this
that they are baffled but can make out
the shape of a feeling to which they assign
no number, gender
that they have sources
of lift
