Bad Binaries

The research says we need more sleep 

or less. Scientists bark hydrogen, oxygen, 

mice, repeat. They tell us flat then round, Pluto 

then not. Doctors never said dwarf to my face, 

never had to. I watch goldfish swim laps 

in an old vodka bottle in the neighbor’s window 

and relate. Some thoughts exist to disintegrate. 

Some people feel their entire lives are dust 

light. I watch a kid kick a telephone pole 

with his brother’s face glued to his boot. 

And isn’t that how it goes? We replace one 

thing for another, drug for dollar, collar 

bone for liver symphony. We romanticize cheating 

until it finally comes and find we’re only scraped backs 

and back taxes. Back alley cardboard collecting rain. 

How easy, hard. In the drive-thru a woman dismantles 

her chicken sandwich as a gesture and I know it isn’t 

cheap. My sad tan car won’t start, my dog will die soon. Woe 

upon woe. How do we arrive at arrival? How 

do we sing amnesia out of our lovers’ heads? 

Ask science, ask deity. My body’s piñata 

is a million questions, whales singing for a wooden 

bat. Do you hear me? Do you want to?

Have you ever not been alone?

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Philip Schaefer’s collection Bad Summon (University of Utah Press, 2017) won the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize. He won the 2018 Thomas Morton Poetry Prize published by The Puritan, the 2016 Meridian Editor’s Prize in poetry, and has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and in the Poetry Society of America. Some poems can be found in Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Journal, Thrush, Guernica, Salt Hill, Bat City Review, Adroit, Redivider, and BOAAT, among others. He tends bar in Missoula, MT.