Avenue Street
Sometimes we are dying.
Somethings it is times inside us, ending into selves our bodies set up on the return.
I eye your know, my key-hands.
Your particular tooth, hair gap in the front two unconcerned with regularity, home in
the bone of your jaw.
I crane Oakland down this tar port. Eight months.
They seem never to move, but probably they do move, white steel grazing like future
cows in late-day ozone.
My go toes flanked by hills’ flanks keep.
What each wants to run one, small peaceful coin, exist tinted extravagantly with
dusk, blue, in love, and dying.
What I given there for it.
Future Tense
Future futures collect and shiv. A mass
amassing massively missives miss, miss.
She inverts where our eyes go, puts the sea edge
in the sky. Confrerity could not be this surprising, ideally.
The sixth extinction happening over pizza and beer.
We disagree late, later, belatedly but we’re here,
aren’t we here, right here. Persimmon crescents
float into hunger sugary and unnoticed
except by the eaters, who marvel. Chew. I start living here
four years in, accepting speculative fictions are
what happen and what I do. Big into
night baying more, more.
Sarah Payne grew up in mid-coast Maine. She lived in Louisiana prior to relocating to California, where she is a graduate student at UC-Berkeley. Additional work is forthcoming in SAND.