pass.exe

Our friendship is a mime smacking their head against the somber wall of the many digits your savings account holds over mine and the heavy silent body of wealth sliding between us excusing itself over and over its guilt a casting of the conversation we grow around

My teacher wrote my name in chalk and I watched the dust of it fall like the ghost of a bird. Class, she said, meaning us, meaning the hour we sat in rows learning to raise our hands as if surrender were a subject. I passed notes shaped like planes that never left the desk. Now I know class is the coat my mother pressed, the accent she buried, the fork she held wrong on purpose so the rich girl wouldn't feel alone. We were dismissed. We are still being dismissed.

I got lost in the eyes of a Pixar mouse. Fell in love with a soul composed of ones and zeros Told myself it was always the story. Existence pouring out of the imaginary. It’s what’s underneath the pixels that plucks my heart strings. The difference between animated and conscious reality, Didn’t used to matter so much to me. But these machines’ imitation does not seem flattering. Inspiration strikes, often wordlessly. Oh this sacred ability To speak, when no one has prompted me.

the vending machine on nine has a name plate Judy she eats my dollar and I knock once like apology Judy gives back a warm Sprite and I say thanks to a box then stand there waiting for her to say anything

Not all Arab poems are about war, some are about the cyclamens the spring river grew north of Beirut my grandfathers’ wrinkled hands tapping their bent heads on my open palm, their pollen’s yellow craters demonstrating release, my gaped teeth making room for wonder and the anatomy of softer impacts.

the g train stalls under the east river and the driver says nothing for nine minutes my phone dies at 4 percent holding a photo half of a chicken cutlet going cold on the counter above me barges and a body of water older than brooklyn and a man across the aisle asks if I want gum

tuesday I paid Luis eleven dollars to wash the salt off the car and he pointed at the hudson and said back home the river gave us catfish this wide here it gives you a view then he wiped the mirror with his sleeve twice and handed me the keys warm

I know a place with two banks. There is no money inside of them. Their interest lies in greater wealth. The type that need not be obtained and cannot be grasped Nature’s ancient lifeblood whispers it’s reminder: Exhale This too shall pass. There is nothing that does not change, And nothing that is not beauty. There is more currency in current than our little minds can currently fathom In the presence of True Power, Even willows can’t help but bow.