I find myself
inclined to abbreviation and yet
I find it still
            altogether too perplexed

in the white-yellow-white-yellow scrambled-egg
experience I am
busy making you telling you
            this: that all my initial

vision was was pour   
some fatty milk in a container,
mix up, let warm room temp, watch
            it do its thing, wait some more, allowing

it wallow and impend
upon linoleum so faraway,
I absconded
            to the great beyond already: now I am running errand

passive in the backseat of the pickup
truck, my mother at the wheel, veering from the pasture to the city
dump: there,
            then back, then           

back again unthinking of dilapidated milk
at home. The sky gripes
a little
            pained at all

the earthy glut
of aggrandized trash, some
of it appliance, some of it degenerate, the rest of it
            who knows what it is, once was, but all of it plainly           

uniform, mingled, riveted
to others,
inured with self.
            I saw a plastic skeleton glowy and entwined

with fingerprint, saw grime embellish picnic benches, defunct plastic dishware, saw
macaroni snap in 3, art contained therein sustain the
impact, intact, and hence:
            I saw myself condoned

as inward flesh and outward bone: my body
was skin
and teeth by then, my hair hairs
            on the back of someone else’s crooked

neck. And there was my mother, absorbed
in letting
go my plastic baby stuff
            to ozone and the earth,

according corresponding
jumbo bins with some variety
of permanence.  
            I was despondent.

The world was riddled with description. The world let
vultures orbit over
my addled childhood
            things like nothing, things

come to end on purpose: matter made
to matter
more-or-less amorphous, made
            to overlook and

sanction: you 
put these things there, wait,
put those things behind you, concede   `          
            to pay a slight fee upon departure. Did not inspect the nature

of the direction we were headed home
in, until et
cetera became a point
            of conversation at the gas station convenience

4 miles away: how are you, oh you      
know, dropping off, et cetera, my mother and me, gazes slack
to moving, athletic colors
            on screens. It goes

as follows: the smell of the city dump sticks
to your antiseptic skin and it is a stink from which
even you, patient
            in the kitchenette are not

exempt. I let the milk sour
on principle, or tried my best to let
it sour. I am surpassed
            by things, am

as unsurprised as before
today, before the egg-and-milk
debacle: you left, we decongested house, you came back,
            pinched your nose:

“I don’t mean to be critical, but
is something rotting in here?”
It was.
            Or was.           

The milk’d curdled &
the day was never
so negligent
            or expressed.