2 Poems
by Jared White

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The Anthropology of Interesting

There are good reasons to feel how you are feeling. Don’t stare into the target

Sneaking up. I’ll split a stick with you. Docent slime. That’s when I started to care.

That’s when I started to like it. If I did the same thing over and over eventually

I would evolve. The iteration of success would take on the numinous clarity of

Real estate. Try walking past the neighbors without being mauled by the dog

And being told it’s your own damn fault for looking funny. Meanwhile the dog

Looks at you with very big very tiny eyes. The pages have fallen out of order.

Their heap is covered with substances that came from the inside of the body,

All this wasted on a single census of prisoners on the lam hiding out next door.

Her name is Victoria and her name is Suzanne and her name is Dominique.

Looking for the actual culprit I train myself to lift off prints with scotch tape,

Paintbrushes and petri dishes. The next time you see me I will bring you gifts.

It’s fashionable to talk like we are partners and parents. How sweet is that?

Is it sweeter than it is sour and how sour and how bitter and how umami?

The wrong diet coke could cause me to kill myself. It’s guaranteed hemlock free

And that’s a promise from god in the church and the gun barrel. Dip it in hummus,

I am never going to feel guilty. The body moldering on a bed inside a pyramid

Squares the circle. This cart is full of slow perishing food, this cart is full of toys

And all along they were stealing carts! You better learn from experience such as

I am tapped by my wide bore finishing tool. It looks made for disrupting beavers

As they dam up the great rivers. They don’t even care about hydroelectric power

While the light from space incinerates the branches. You aren’t home anymore

And every other word you say offends me how you say it. Every other other word

I misconstrue. As I was having a dilemma, the doorbell rang. Invasion of idyllic

Offered competent officers awaiting assignment. How long is a just right beard?

Can you grow one without trying? I bet it could be tested for residue of softness.

How were you living when you were stumbled upon? It was the apotheosis part

Where someone tells you what to do. That’s lightning hurtling toward a fallacy.

Sometimes when you touch them and you look at them they are all grown up.

You’d think a designation of disaster would make it easier. It only makes it easier

To clean. Through bookshelves they passed foodstuffs. Console pitch changed

To rot your teeth, run out the clock, get happy, put a noble animal in the blender

With oil pressed from the fruit of certain exotic trees. More cheaply marketed,

These situations could be mass-produced. Critter finger, our cubicles side by side

In the courtly love tradition one can always condominium. I’m going to stay out of it.

This is between you and matrilineage and patrilineage and fratrilineage and sisters.

I aged out of precocity years ago and now am I no longer in control of the message

If I am in control of the medium. Are there medicines in the breeze that comes in

When you crack a window? I see ghosts of bugs. I smoosh those too. The economy

Is not in free fall. Who knows if I can more mild enough. I spend literally zero time

Parting my hair when I get out of the shower. I don’t get out of much that I get into

But that’s a prettier outfit that I first thought. Just keep it in mind, when I say more

I mean more configurations of ingredients on the box of ingredients, more chunks

Of glass jabbing all over, more green powder, more allegories of schmutz on shirt

Worn to the adoption ceremony, more reasons, more ratios, more lottery tickets

As consolation prizes when the judge says no. I have to stop it with these videos

And horseback riding lessons. What I wanted got reduced to unwanted particles,

Whole ideas for making money into autodidacticism. It was embarrassingly crass,

Billy’s billy goat’s gruff transmogrified into waking the neighbors with vespers,

The fur city rag, the telephone cord’s permanent kink, the slackest sail ever seen.

What I learned in a period of several weeks applied haphazardly to the remainder

And I literally can’t imagine being in the wrong line of work for my temperament.

Under these meteor trajectories I made decent amounts of love so please satellites

You do that little thing. I work better at the kitchen table, coping with distractions.









The New Regime

I wrenched. This in spite of air in the body spaces spinning into a jelly

Or balls. I didn’t get it but there were no conclusions to draw from this

Satisfaction. Certain clothing revealed underneath. And so I removed

To a safe distance and waited for the inevitable implosion predicted

In the science textbook. I wasn’t even waiting all that long but forgot

There was a specific intention and a cry that was this terrible specific

Person sometimes behind various walls posing problems. Sculpted

This then into such exquisite detail. That was when it broke and again

The maniac with fingers among the hairs purportedly in my memoirs

Transformed a moment of defeat from which I report into the reopening

Of the equation. This asked of me a favor was easily accomplished

By total surrender. I had all of these wants which were actual things

Good to want. Even then transferring the deed at the first convenience

To make afresh some impulses. And I had not very much as a given to

Work with. It gave to me these gravid bodily things. Also, some money

I wouldn’t mind. That was the quandary awaiting the arrival of equipage.

Even as technology improved the interface I inspected interstices as if

Here was where I turned into me as could be recognized. Not the vague

This is this is. Which had to be cassava in the encyclopedia of possible

Recipes done the long way. The stereotype of good versions of retirement

Came quickly in the courtyard. Watermelon stains. Slow jogs meaning

How slow. It hurt differently than it used to but not less. Furthermore

There was glamor in spelling. I breathed on the numbers astonishment

Of astonishing things one isn’t going to see again like Rip Van Winkle

Or intemperance. The movement slicked conveniently with a finger in

The guesses up to a knuckle or so until the red skin mottled in the fist

Autobiographically. Underneath these impulses I meant the briquets

Were returning from the flames as people styled fancier than before.

I covered the covers with blankets and then stripped down warranting

Removal from the original location not for warmth but to open wide

Windows as a medieval limit of knowledge given instead to chivalry

Turned ninety degrees stubbed in the center portion brought back to life

By perspectival shifts and an imaginary bird’s eye. The gold was sinking

And the mines were undergoing procedures as if a revelation prescribed

To biopsy the indecision fix but not the most advanced example of like

Planting a beanstalk with what was handy and why is that it wouldn’t

Get along. Petuous. Simply I was attempting to be less than I had been

While the economy raised compelling objections. So quickly. Unreal

Unsustainable. The wind could have had something to do with noises

Of the rearrangement. If only walls worked less convincingly to carry

Porticos, cornices, and trellises to climb when lighter treading water

Could push me up said Romeo. Come a little closer so I can see you

Dangerously blithe. For instance this is what I did today for instance.

The solitaire game was coming to a startling close. It was only a round

Not sufficient filler up. It would conveniently end at the exact time

But when does it happen everyone is born when they want to be doing

The available activities versus a language. The baby cute in features

As in recognizable. The muscle to be stretched not strengthened

And a complementary turn off. Also criminals are younger than me.

I am doing nothing listening to the miles. You can’t say that anymore.