two poems, first published in Poetry Review

Neopets

1.
A bird swallowed by a cone-like evergreen.
Kids walking out of dark bamboo.
Inside, the father’s voice
sounding nothing like my father.

2.
A phone rings. Zafara
leaps out of the computer
and asks to be fed:
“It’s been over two years.
I’m dying, I’m dying.”

3.
Let me be a snowglobe turned inside-out,
arms dangling into my sleeves,
breath so hot it makes me come.
“So what,” I say, “you’ll never die.”

I’m Sorry, Dave

A person in a chair tells me about her trauma, thinks
         she isn’t sincere enough, rips her face off by the hair.
Beneath, Hal from Malcolm in the Middle vents about Lois
         then jags his fingers in his mouth

and tears off his face. The new head’s smaller and so on, defacing
         itself to be sincerer,
defacing itself to be sincerer, until my final head is the size
         of a pea on such wide shoulders.