Radiatore

My favorite kind of pasta is radiatore.
I eat it in walnut pesto fresh from the pot
and pretend that I’m eating radiators.

It’s like when somebody tells you that
the world is on their shoulders
or that their heart belongs to you,

because unless you’re some kind of heart realtor,
a titan, or a giant robot, these situations are impossible—
it just humors us to pretend for a while.

That’s a Pretty Song, Old Man, but I’ve Heard it Before

If wishes were horses, then I would have a horse

and I would brush my horse’s mane
until a lot of the hairs fell out.
My horse’s hair would be gray,
and if my horse’s hair was not gray,
then I would look into horse-friendly hair dye

and I would name my horse
after a band I listened to with a girl,
either Mutante or Helsinki

and I would be afraid to ride this horse
because I would remember getting dragged by a pony on my fifth birthday,
even though that might have been a dream

but I would mount this horse
one day when it was about to rain,
deciding that I wanted to get some riding in
finally.

I would mount my horse
and hold on for the rest of my life.

I would ride my horse toward the clouded morning sun
until I reached the edge of the Cape
or starved to death and fell off.

“A country road. A tree. Evening.”

There is a kind of a joke
that goes that dogs
see humans giving them food
and think, “They’re taking care of me;

they must be gods,”
whereas cats
see humans giving them food
and think, “They’re taking care of me;

I must be a god,”
the joke of course being
that animals don’t understand
that gods have to be invisible.

There is a probably apocryphal story
that goes that a literature student
gets the chance to ask Samuel Beckett
a single question, and asks
if Godot was supposed to be God,
and Samuel Beckett looks at the student
as if he were a blind man riding another man like a horse
and says, “Of course,”
and then disappears.

There comes a point
when you’re driving through a flat state
at which, from the corner of your eye,
you witness each row of crops
nearest your line of vision
open up to you, one after another,
as if the land were shining on your car,
and you think it will shine like that forever;
it’s the point just before you remember
that the drive home is always the shorter one.