Starbucks makes these Starbucks-green plastic devices that you think are stirrers at first, or sandwich picks, drink-garnishes topped with a smooth curve of green mermaid etch,
and sometimes there might be that ragged-sharp middle edge where plastic tore imperfectly from its
mold, and you can see the green plastic trays they snap out of at the factory, but after you look at it
you find with a small quick wonder they are coffee caps, coffee tampons, sliding through the plastic
mouth-hole, almost clicking into place; you take one every time you come in and hide a mermaid in your pocket, chew it later, when you want a smoke

You’re piling on huge
spaces so dull and gray,

waspish and how space—how
heavy space can be

Can something be
hollow and heavy yes it can, be

At the library where they use their old catalog cards as scrap paper you take a few every time you go because you like the typewriter’s interest in dissertations on cephalopods’ distinct intelligence, and you are sure that the ink will prove its usefulness, that it is like art, had been useful, is quaint, has aura

heavy, hollow—So

they are big spaces

They are about
their space

That they contain
little And all you can think

listen is your wrists ache with what you never
suspected used to be
secret reservoirs And they hurt more,
the outside of your wrists, underside
There are clearly empty

spaces that before were filled with brown
ticking liquid that soothed
and bit and filled till the spaces
don’t know, they are not spaces anymore
And that’s the thing, you placed your hands
ulna first to your face, styloid

process up, bite That’s the thing your spaces, squiddish glands,
slid down your throat

I had a couple of beers once and stopped at the library on the way home and I took too many cards and my left back pocket was shallow so as I walked forward with my left leg a manila hole-punched stack of cards fanned out of my pocket onto the floor and I crouched on the nubbed blue carpet of the lighted entry trying to scrape cards of record from the floor