Robitussin & tourmaline. I licked Gwendolyn Brooks’ grave in a fever dream. I wasn’t afraid of

dying on the flight home. Dextromorphathan, I was better with words when I wasn’t with them.

Little is new—written small, on a mirror in Philadelphia next to the hole in the wall in the

shape of my running body. One ear then the other. Barely visible in the dust of the standing

crowd. So much is different but I am not better. In my literary dreams, Carl Phillips plays me—

playing myself. Norman Mailer gives me a handjob. During intermission Susan Sontag whispers

in my ear that she has to go to the bathroom. Perhaps this is blasphemous, but Phil Levine is

there too. I swear to God. In the bathroom with Susan together in perfect unison reciting Auden.

Put a sparrow in the poem and make sure you do not become this sparrow