Matthew Rohrer

I'm writing upside down with the space pen, listening to the rain. My wife is writing about the Black Death and its effects on Art, and asks me “Where are your pants?” They are on the floor in front of our new couch, where I arrange them to spell out L-O-V-E. A vegetable, mystic thrill runs through me— the couch is something's antenna. It bears good love to us here over the laundromat. I'm waiting for the Light Beings to remove my roof. Our bedroom is lousy with clothes spelling out greetings if anyone's up there who can read English.

It was a good day and I was about to do something important and good, but then I unscrewed the pen I was using to see the ink. Precision German craftsmanship. The Germans are so persnickety and precise, they wash their driveways. Their mountains and streams dance around each other in a clockwork, courtly imitation of spring. They build the Panzer tank, out of rakes hoses and garden gnomes; they built me. And I’ve seated myself above an avenue on the brink of mystery, always just on the lip, with my toes over the lip but my bowels behind. When I replaced the ink the sky was socked in, only one window of blue open in the north, directly over someone. But that person was reading about Rosicrucians in the laundromat, he was unaware as the blue window closed above him. The rest of us are limp and damp, I see a button in front of us that says “spin cycle.” I’m going to push it.

The kids fighting over 4 or 5 pennies my ears ringing bent to the shape of   the spring moon I am a crybaby

In my dream his voice began to fade I had to call him the next day I feel about average he said I’m going out to buy some juice a huge frog was in the driveway a small boat drifting the river flowed in silence

A friend e-mails how much are you enjoying yourself? a dripping faucet loose cat litter no doubt about it a good world is difficult I say as if I were tilling a field ashamed of myself I apologize to the sleeping child

The whole country in a courtly dance its tiny mouth open I pour another cup of wine and falling, rising the children remove their toys around the small apartment to their bunk beds not quite dark yet early spring with snow on the wind the woman across the street bent like a sickle collecting bottles and cans knocks, goes on I wonder where she lives and the stars shining on her greasy clothes

In a minute among the river reeds I will debut my composition a urine-stained quilt is the flag of early summer rain and when I open my mouth not even a bird singing contains all my ideas for rising and falling all day my phone vibrates its tiny mouth in the mountain’s shadow

How long and thin she seems today a field of mustard smiling up at the sun it draws her eyebrows together in a little pain I don’t think I ever saw calligraphy of geese like this overseas oaks and pines pretending to be asleep not quite dark yet as it is at home poor people, midnight

The sound of the water jar empties in the open graves where the refugees live. Because it does not touch me near my pillow I can sleep and dream of  the clean lines of  summer. What I thought were faces turn out to be elaborate plates of sweets not this human sadness. One or two inches above my head until the mosquito sticks his snout into my dream.

A photograph on the back of a hand mirror resembles someone you knew who sang themselves utterly away. It cannot touch you or the sound of the rapids. Leave it, and walk farther crawling up my leg to find me all smiles attached to nothing. You and I can stay in the morning dew. My little telephone in the mulberry fields going unanswered on that blade of grass.