Mongoose BMX beercans
beast parts
the gleaming wrinkles
of the hands,

all the world’s ditches
placed in the refined hand.

My friend gave up poetry
to work with the poor

for whom he could
write and write and write

and still just be a creepy mage,
oh, you thing to be

grown into
resistance
and surrender
to world,

enemy, home enemy country,
where do all my pencils come from?

What are your bois commitments?
The first men?
Extinct megafauna?

It drives me crazy
snowbank lake,
sodden ears of the moose

it’s not our world at all; it’s another star!

untidy grasses in the still pond
looking through
and forward too.

Mineral.
If there are any dimes in my pocket
I resemble the earth.

JARED STANLEY is the author of Book Made of Forest (Salt Publishing, 2009), as well as the chapbooks I Something Scott Inguito You (Scantily Clad, 2009) and The Outer Bay (Trafficker, 2008). With Lauren Levin and Catherine Meng, he edits Mrs. Maybe. He lives in Merced, California.