Worst Things First, by Mark Bibbins

A bag of thank-you notes fell

on me and that was enough

art for one day. Culturally speaking,

it was more like a year

in the floral trenches, kicked off

with a single boneless kiss.

Poor sad demon in his poor dead tree—

or is it he who pities me, cockshy

quasihero with a latex lasso,

taking forever to measure

 

the dimensions of his confinement.

Some other demons have smeared a flock

of sparrows on a blanket, the full filthy

price of a sky under which they smoked

their names. My prize is a set

of teeth, striptease at the nude beach,

audio files of decomposing stars

telling me, if they’re telling me

anything, that theory’s just another word

for nothing left to like.

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And You Thought You Were the Only One, by Mark Bibbins

Someone waits at my door. Because he is
dead he has time but I have my secrets–

this is what separates us from the dead.
See, I could order take-out or climb down

the fire escape, so it’s not as though he
is keeping me from anything I need.

While this may sound like something I made up,
it is not; I have forgotten how to

lie, despite all my capable teachers.
Lies are, in this way, I think, like music

and all is the same without them as with.
The fluid sky retains regret, then bursts.

He is still there, standing in the hall, insisting
he is someone I once knew and wanted,

come laden with gifts he cannot return.
If I open the door he’ll flash and fade

like heat lightning behind a bank of clouds
one summer night at the edge of the world.