Connor Messinger

Pleasure

dream of birdfeeders. start dreaming of birdfeeders. I wish I had a birdfeeder. none of these poems contain birdfeeders. but they should and I’m mad that they don’t. some people should confront their privilege. some people need birdfeeders. is it one word or two? do you have one? I was out walking by the lake, there are two lakes, they’re small, about 200 feet each like little eyes and you walked by, one hand in the air. it was in that moment that I realized I missed you. I had always missed you. Nora says that all movement is circular. I believe them.

I believe I am avoiding pleasure. do you believe me? will you read this if something happens? let’s make, create, “and voices.” where have they gone, where have you been. some palatial gliding back and forth and we were never even that close were we. to ourselves I mean. this is how I answer your question of how it feels. I say something like, it feels cozy. you cook old eggs, I read Milton (this is a lie), I sit back and think about reading Milton, I should probably read Milton, don’t tell anyone, instead I look up his life story and forget it shortly thereafter. you leave old eggs in the pan.

if we look at this in circles time starts to act differently. for instance, if I take a long train ride it can be 19 hours, but it was actually 19 days, no one else on the train will realize this, only the people who are looking at the train in circles will realize this, the line people eat sausage biscuits and diagnose snow.

what if there were a new moon every week – what would you call it? memory goes faster when time slows down and the more moons the slower we are. they’d like to think that I’m far away from you but I’m still here, I know.

The Inside of a Fridge

how can they still like it there? they’ll say

well isn’t that too bad and continue on – there’s

that path at the christopher street market garden

they turned the sprinklers on me once there. oh

sorry i didnt see you, that’s fine, me neither –

then they’ll say oh yes it’ll take 4 weeks – four

weeks for what is what i said. i’ve seen that

buick before – i’ve seen all the cars here before.

eventually one gets bored, inevitably you’ll ask

me to see the inside of my fridge – i’ll eat

4 pieces of toast, the wind will come back. i’ll

say it’s not clean and you’ll still put your hand

there. it’s 11:52. time to go. but, no you’ll sit

eating your variations on breakfast a slight toast

a heavy toast if you forget long enough the trees

lose their leaves. back to the performance. who

puts together an addendum of gods? what would it be

like to just go about life with a head like that,

with a flag like that, with two flags like that on

either side of your head, and there you are cutting

over the grass with sandwiches in your hands, it

should be a calming scene but they say don’t do that.

and it was thus in this space or in this creation

of the space between here and there that a sort

of distillation was possible, as in you deliver

a pile of comforters but no one seems to care, some

thing like that. what could be more tragic and why

doesn’t my apartment have any fucking candles.