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———gabriel palacios

phased arrival

On the fireroads flying 
from the stadium concavity of dust consumption 
faces in Ferrari-crimson velvet Christmas 
postcard gowns we lick like 
beasts softfurred ensnared 
to manumit the remnant electricity of God loose from us


Tell my mother I forgot 
I was and shall remain 
a medical receptionist lady 
in the interstice of actual and toy 
nanotech exits come to pass


I tithed into the member rolls of rival 
province-folk with service alley thirsts
their prepaid legal service wealth summits 
orphanage supply drive prayer waffle breakfasts
tier one MVD customer service 
positions one must splay for 
the stay


Until waiting’s much the same but soft and mediated 
murder in pure darkness of a dome where they 
control the rain


Not to obfuscate my code I now 
could have magazines 
delivered is what I’m saying
back issues one could tell as
knife ads hewed slavishly to verdant landscape
laser grids and thus one could appreciate 
the magazine peoples’ savagely accelerating fate
in those homogenized fangs of their white smilers
though most of what my brain sticks on is language 
language language
until language one must leave it smells more shit than bleach 
outside being mobbed up and famous feels how shopping in a clothes bank does

golden great

All things as they tumble into being break in forceps 
of a love: the timbres of our suffering—  what’s transmitted,
winced at laughing— split new tongues;
radio borrowed from a house whose master rots unfound
shellacs the spraypainted 
body I am miming from 
in mockingly, incongruously gold
antique electro on the shore.


The cranes and excavators 
whistle like two jet planes
coming close to kiss,


the unstaffed seasons. 
The reaching sea foam green hand 
from its weekend coins and snow.

wishbook

What year it was: I’m dressed in 
a western snap-buttoned 
shirt a teacher who’s not
mine has tucked into my corduroys. 
I couldn’t stop crying: I sense
that’s why I’m there in that glaringly 
unoccupied and broken 
slat-lighted page.


A balaclavad-out, disfeatured 
sad commando vowed by bayonet 
to speechlessness monastic
forges something psychic with a wolf—


the toy of that slack-jointed
from compulsive
posing’s why that is.

Hollywood Stranger, Can I Live?

You have to say I can’t
as you plead mercy
to a dollar
strung off sightlines. 


Blood you’re nothing
if not 40 in LA;
the solace of your all-time number one 


most cinematic sandwich;  
breath-knocked fix on stairs upside 
the movie house fucked blank. 


Most won’t sit for face tattoos yet
take on scribbles
I can’t, myself, see past.

The Country-Music Lovers of the Spaceship

Your employment is terminated as of today, 
as is your medical insurance. 
You have the option of continuing 
your coverage under 
the COBRA act,
I could hear myself recite. 
He signed and peeled out 
of our office park, 
colliding moments later 
half a mile down the road 
full speed into a median 
then another car. I could hear it. 
Then he was on life support but then 
they took him off it. 


I would recognize that slurred cumbia bassline
drinking liquor in the post office parking lot 
on Christmas Eve at closing 
I would recognize it 
underwater 
I don’t 
understand a word.


The country music lovers of 
the spaceship
mow down 
revelers jammed up 
on the crosswalks


and the perseverance of their 
weekend news 
is my faith
any showered bible-college 
smile might trepan 
our siloed and deadbolted-down little scenarios.
Their cloud drift map screen’s 
dreamful two-step


undoes thunderbirdlike 
clawgrips on myself.


In one such sigh I thought I’d make it seem
I get a kick 
at living next to you is all it ever was.

desire

Late when I can’t sleep 
I desire to give you these compliments.
My eyes come morning won’t pass


Face ID inspection but they’ll still be
human’s eyes, 
await in the dressed body


of an animal.
A subscription to these human’s eyes, await
in the dressed bodies 


of meat animals 
that you can’t even keep up with. Why,
you ask me as you ask


yourself, what cartel execution 
news ad did you click? If I’d been 
childless: no trace


on any cyborg shrieking down 
the Martian tarmac of us;
If I could choose a second stint 
more abandoned to you

Polaroid Handed to a Widow

Headshot smile at some festered
blue arcanum
splayed,
and hair matted 
to slab 


High Street Bridge Self Storage


Wind chime shimmer
Potluck funeral


The lied to and abused 
white mountain pickups
park haphazardly on ice 
in perpetually turned over California

Intestasy

I’m retired, I maintain,  
joke-surrendering my hands up,
put in towncar
by two suited, twenty-something relatives,
two garage doors of cursed ice. 


A distance from the skylights;
waterflowerettes; crystal; brass; 
attachments and the call 
to echolocate
where the crying’s coming from…


This entire fucking
Sunday-school-offered-warmth-
in-the-viscera-of-an-imprisoned- 
chiropractor’s-office’s
country.


What glitch usury?
By whose exploit returneth overdrawn 
the infant son?

Lost Pilot

The phonebook of my people is a dubbed
Where’s Waldo orgy triptych tape of cabalistic sign code, 
rival graveyards,
Protestant and Catholic (who cares?)


Pilgrims squire batteries and brides up trampled passes 
in the chainlink that secures the border ditch 


It doesn’t matter where you start


They burgle the ingredients for soup out of your trunk,
jumper cables, 
a Polaroid too faded 
to be damning now
You’re buckling your battery
in the car seat, 


as it happens


Trust me
I could swear he already died 
at least five years ago? 
is what you want 
whispered of you. 


Now he’s gone forever lol